MEMORIAL DAY IN THIS AGE OF PERPETUAL WAR

LONGEST WAR IN OUR HISTORY

CONTINUES WITH NO END INSIGHT

TAGS: WAR ON TERROR, 9/11/01, MULTIPLE DEPLOYMENTS,

JSOC, SPECIAL FORCES OPERATIONS, UNSHARED BURDENS OF SERVICE,

THE LETHALITY OF ARMED CONFLICT, REMEMBERING OUR

KIA’s, MILITRY COMMENTARY, EDITORIAL, OPINION

(Monday May 30^th, 2016 Pier 86, NYC) The retired vintage WWII aircraft carrier turned museum, the USS Intrepid is permanently moored to Pier 86 at W 46th St & 12th Ave. on the Westside of Manhattan and stands as an impressive piece of naval hardware.  To walk her flight deck though, it is not hard to imagine just how small a vessel it was out in the often raging open seas.  It is dwarfed in sheer size and technological capability by the nuclear powered “Super Carriers” of today.  Today’s carriers are literal floating cities boasting well trained crews of over 5,000 sailors while serving as home base for up to 75 various types of aircraft. The superior advancement in technology and science in all disciplines as evidenced in our daily lives is also on display in the military machinery from our aircraft, warships, and field artillery and infantry equipment, to our aircraft, satellites, helicopters and drones.  From the development of Stealth aircraft architecture to radar, sonar, “smart” bombs and other munitions technology has revolutionized modern warfare so totally that most of what is taken for granted today could not have even been dreamt of a few decades ago.

What has never changed about warfare is its lethality.  Sure, our weapons can be launched from afar to deliver death quickly and efficiently.  Unmanned drones are controlled by “pilots” half a world away from the battle fields.  Our Army Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps boast the best trained and equipped troops the world has ever seen but death, to most the main goal of meting out death to our “enemy” is as old as our species.

We seem to now expect our battles to be served up cold.  We are willing to engage whomever where ever provided we can do so with as few “boots on the ground” as strategically and technologically possible.  This is, of course, naïve and, as a practical matter, it is simply not realistic.  Military conflict be it of the “conventional” strategy and tactics fielded for centuries, or the newfangled “asymmetrical warfare” we confront today, still requires putting members of our military into “harm’s way”.  There is no way around it if the mission is to be successful. 

Now, in our 15^th year of perpetual war on many far-flung “battle spaces” as they are euphemistically called, we have time and again asked our military to serve multiple deployments, to do “more with less” as was the credo of the Cheney/Bush era failed Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld and his “neo-con” acolytes, as we continue to spend our precious blood and diminishing treasure in so many ill-defined battle spaces where tangible “victory” may never be realized.  Still our troops fight on.  According to a recent status report by the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) there are currently Special Forces including Navy SEALs, Army Rangers and Delta Force, USMC Maritime Raid Force (MRF) operating in over 100 countries.  Let that sink in; we have some of our most elite troops spread around the world in over 100 countries. 

Our troops are doing what they have always done.  They are fighting, largely anonymously, and dying in the same manner.  Even their own families, their closest next of kin have scant information regarding where their sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, mothers and father are fighting and dying.  Since the inception of an “all-volunteer” force the once shared sacrifice of military Service is borne by less than one tenth of one percent of our population.  And on this day more so than any other, we are compelled to mourn our unknown, unseen, “anonymous” dead.

There is something lost in translation regarding Memorial Day.  Billboards and placards displaying “Happy Memorial Day” are missing the mark.  There should be no “happiness” in Memorial Day.  It is, after all, a day specified to honor our military dead, those who perished on land, sea and in the air in all our collective wars.  Included also are those who succumbed to battlefield injuries after the fact. This is not to suggest that this holiday be a dour time for the families of those lost during our military conflicts.  Not at all. This is the time to remember who they were and what they did for the greater good.  The time for “happiness” in celebration is Veterans Day for that is the day we honor and yes, celebrate, all those who have and are currently serving in all branches of the Military.  The distinction between these two national holidays is not simply a matter of description but an important point of order.

Death is our great equalizer.  We all will die one day of causes from the mundane to the unexpected and every condition and circumstance in between.  Those who are called to fight our wars live with death, the unlikely combination of man’s fragility and resolve; of that which motivates those we call our enemies and what it takes for our Military to defeat them.  The battlefronts of today are like none before.  Terrorism, the rabid, radical Islamic stock in trade presents challenges for our Military and domestic Law Enforcement the likes of which remain relatively new and novel.  But that harsh reality is but a side bar to the truths that have always defined warfare.

In the earliest days of our continuing war against radical Islamic extremists, a large percentage of our standing Military Forces had enlisted primarily to earn the right to aide for their higher education.  Most of those enlistees having joined during a period of peace for the United States had never really considered the fact that they might one day see combat action in some far off land.  For many of them serving in the Reserves and National Guard it was only due to the attractive financial incentive that motivated them to enlist.  Little could any of us imagined up to September 11, 2001, that our nation would be thrust into an asymmetrical war with a terrorist element, a network of Muslim jihadists, the vanguard of which would deliver a devastating blow in the form of four suicide attack hijackings that brought down the formidable Twin Towers in NYC, severely damaged The Pentagon, with the last plane crashing into a remote field in Pennsylvania as the doomed passengers fought the hijackers.  Yes, our world, and our role in it was forever altered by the events of that clear blue sunny Tuesday in September of 2001. 

Our young service men and women more than rose to the challenge.  As the rightful battle campaign in Afghanistan quickly vanquished the Taliban and cornered Osama bin Laden and the surviving cadre of al Qaeda in the rugged mountainous region of Tora Bora it appeared that total ‘victory’ was at hand.  But, our troops were betrayed by the Cheney/Bush neo-con agenda determined to attack Iraq and topple the brutal regime of Saddam Hussein.  This shift of focus has proven to be disastrous.  Had we finished the mission in Afghanistan and began to assist them in finding their own tribal ways towards peaceful coexistence without the iron-handed rule of the Taliban and their misguided interpretation of Sharia law, the mission would have wound down perhaps as early as 2003 or 2004.

But, true to form and in the proud tradition of the United States Military, our troops adapted and responded to the task at hand.  They had no way of knowing that the ill-conceived incursion into Iraq would spawn an insurgency, internal conflict, and ferocious resistance to the US Military presence.  Some of the battle grounds will go down in history as so many other battlefields from our past have.  Places like Ramadi, Fallujah, Mosul, Tikrit, Baghdad, and more anonymous stretches of desert and land will become part of Army Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps lore.  

We are right to memorialize our war dead on this day.  There are plenty of other days to raise a fist, wave a flag, apply some patriotic bumper sticker, or generally boast about what a bad assed country we are ready to open a can of whuppass on any one who dares cross us.  This is the low brow idealism of those who have never worn the uniform, who have never known the brutality of combat, who have never been indoctrinated to sacrifice their life for that of a fellow brother in arms.  And, perhaps, that is just fine.  The military is certainly not everyone’s calling.  But there is the tremendous distinction between patriotism and service, between love of country, life and liberty and the bonds formed in the white hot heat of combat for it is from those bonds that cohesion among our troops is forged. 

We mourn those killed in action and should pause for a moment during the backyard barbecue, shopping spree at the mall, or whatever activity we choose on this three-day weekend to recognize the sacrifices of our young men and women who went to war and never came back.  

 Copyright The Brooding Cynyx 2016 © All Rights Reserved

VETERANS DAY 2014

THE UNEQUAL BURDEN
 OF SACRIFICE UNSHARED

A VETERANS DAY COMMENTARY

(Updated Wednesday November 12, 2014)

(Tuesday November 11, 2014, NYC)  It was once the great equalizer, the common experience that was the cementing mortar that held our society together.  When sacrifice is borne by all; shared across all strata of society, it creates a stronger more cohesive nation more prone towards unity than division. 

We are engaged and have been actively fighting wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and other lesser known locales under the auspices of our “war on terror” with an entirely volunteer military.  The generation of combat veterans, young warriors who have seen fierce, brutal battle, represent a mere 1% of their peer group and many of those who volunteered prior to September 11, 2001, had enlisted into the Reserves and National Guard primarily for the educational benefits used to attract young men and women to the military services.  Few, if any signed up for multiple deployments and the stresses that accompany such involvement.

LOOKING BACK: VIETNAM

By January 1973 we were a war weary country; a people who had long past the point of supporting our efforts in the jungles of that far off place that became synonymous with guerrilla warfare and the harsh brutalities of fighting a largely unseen enemy in an environment they knew intimately.  The public, particularly the parents of the young men and women serving in Vietnam were questioning the strategy, tactics and the rationale for continuing this protracted campaign, a campaign that would never grant us a clearly defined victory. 

And it was that year of 1973 on January 27th that President Nixon put a moratorium on the military draft and ultimately did away with it for good.  No longer would our military services be comprised of conscripts; service would from that time forward be voluntary.  Our country lost much in this exchange, perhaps far more than anyone could have realized back in that troubled summer of protest and open defiance of the draft in 1972 that culminated in the complete end of the draft as announced by Nixon on January 27, 1973. By the time the last troops were finally airlifted out of a riotous Saigon on April 30, 1975, the country and military would slowly come to terms with what felt like a defeat but Nixon called “Peace with Honor.”  For much of the nation and the military itself, the after effects known as the “Vietnam Hangover” set in and would ossify our military for years to come.  The military had lost its luster and had been marred by the harsh realities our troops had experienced and witnessed during a war like no one we had seen up to that time in our history.  It would take the military almost two decades to develop new strategies and tactics for guerrilla, “asymmetrical” warfare.

THAT WAS THEN, THIS IS NOW

The Vietnam era marked the end of the concept of shared sacrifice.  No longer would young men from every city and town, of every race and creed, from every rung on the socioeconomic ladder forever have memories and at least that one similarity.  The country went from every young man being in “The Service” to a massive retreat from the military and an insidious vilification of Vietnam veterans, the kind of hostility and disdain previous legions of veterans had never experienced.  Those were dark days and it would be many years before the American public found their collectively lost spine and once again were willing to send troops to combat zones. 

But the troops who were sent to fight our battles were often drawn from the lowest caste of society.  The military became a refuge for those without other opportunities, for men and women to escape poverty and perhaps learn a trade of some kind that would allow them to prosper, at least minimally, in civilian life.  However, no matter their points of origin or intentions, they served with courage and valor whenever called upon to do so.

The shared sacrifice and common experience of past generations of veterans has become cheaply replaced by a largely unaffected public who fly the American flag in front of their homes and have “Support our Troops” bumper stickers on their pick-ups as if these are potent symbols of a patriot.  They are no such thing.  Most young people today and their parents wouldn’t think of having a son or daughter enlist in the military.  They have seen what those who served in Afghanistan and Iraq have been through; the multiple deployments because of a shortage of ready and qualified troops, a Veterans Administration system completely unprepared to adequately care for the thousands upon thousands of returning veterans with traumatic limb amputations, brain injuries and other horrific battle wounds as well as the unknown battalions of those who suffer, often in silence, wracked by PTSD, depression, alcohol and drug abuse, unemployment and even homelessness. An extremely disturbing and sad fact is that every 65 hours another combat veteran takes his or her own life.

When suicide on that scale becomes the norm there is something institutionally, almost sinfully wrong.  We as a people have not held up our end of "The Pact", the once sacred Covenant that assures our veterans of the care they need.   What are we as a country, as a people, that we stand idly by while tens of thousands of young people suffer these medical and mental maladies and the indignities of hunger, poverty and homelessness?  What is the message we are sending our veterans and anyone considering enlisting?  The answers to these questions say much about our shared neglect and that is directly related to our loss of shared experience.

RE-INSTITUTE THE DRAFT

There was a time when virtually all our elected officials including those in the Senate and House had served in the military.  Those men (those bodies were composed largely of men until the mid-1970’s) who had first-hand experience of the horrors of combat were far more deliberate and reluctant to put American troops “in harm’s way” without a clear threat to our national security or vital national interests.  Former Five Star General and United States President, Dwight D. Eisenhower, the famed World War II commander of the European theater of operations, often spoke of the caution that ought to be used before committing our troops to battle.  He also warned of the vast “military–industrial–congressional complex” that was developing towards his last years as President and how war-making was becoming a lucrative endeavor as the Cold War was developing.  Had his prescient warnings been heeded much of American military history over the last 60 years would have been very different.

If the chicken hawks and war-mongers in Congress continue to seek to commit our troops as they see fit, this time of perpetual warfare cannot be sustained solely by enlistees.  It is a matter of simple arithmetic and attrition.  There are only so many active troops available for foreign forays into ill-defined missions without fully understanding the stakes involved or even the facts on the ground, history of the warring factions and why, exactly, are “we” there. Military incursions without a clearly defined and acknowledged "exit strategy" will inevitably devolve into a murky quagmire. Once sucked into a quagmire and "nation building" our formidable military might is reduced to the facts on the ground which are always to our disadvantage. 

On this Veteran’s Day we should spend a moment contemplating the true meaning of the day, reexamine what patriotism means to us, and learn to not be content to blindly follow our elected officials into untenable combat circumstances.  We have intervened enough in the last 13 years.  We should also find it within ourselves the sufficient amount of gratitude that should be bestowed upon all veterans no matter when or where they served.  They are truly the best of us as a people and represent us best as a country.

 Copyright The Brooding Cynyx 2014 © All Rights Reserved