As in our present adventure, we got in under false pretenses with confused and fearful motives. As in Iraq, politicians tried to hide the war’s true financial costs and pass those costs along to the next generation. They also chose to shelter the middle and upper class from the “butcher’s bill” by skewing the draft so that it primarily targeted the working and poorer classes. I remember watching the black and the brown kids, the ranch kids and the factory worker’s kids being ground up in the meat grinder that was the Vietnam War. They were good-hearted kids, mostly, just trying to do their best for the grown-ups.
I remember coming home somehow expecting, perhaps hoping, to see the nation showing some indication of grief, of emotional involvement, in what was being done to those well-meaning kids.
I was blindsided by what seemed to be a complete disconnect between my reality and stateside America’s. My friends were suffering so that lady could show off her fur coat in a McDonald’s drive-through? At that moment, it seemed clear to me that Americans were more concerned about maintaining their creature comforts and lifestyles than they were about the fate of their children in uniform. I have been troubled by that insight ever since. I am troubled by it now.
By the spring of 1969, the writing was on the wall that decisions needed to be made n but Americans chose to ignore that writing and refused to make the necessary decisions, ensuring that the war would drag on for another four years. Thousands of American and Vietnamese soldiers and civilians died to delay the inevitable. The American military was so damaged by all of this that it would take decades to recover. Somehow it was easier for us to watch that meat grinder continue to eat the working-class kids than it was to bite the bullet and take responsibility for making difficult decisions.
Forty years later, we find ourselves in still another ill-conceived and bungled war. Again, we attempt to pass the economic consequences on to the next generation. Again, young working-class men and women do the suffering while their elders dither on, refusing to either commit themselves wholeheartedly to the enterprise or call a halt to it, refusing to sacrifice for either war or peace. Again, our armed forces are being seriously damaged. Again, most stateside Americans seem to find all of this acceptable as long as they’re not asked to sacrifice anything, as long as it’s happening to someone else’s children. Just keep sending those cookies and those shiny new prosthetic devices.
The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, as presently conducted, are going to go on for years. They are steadily eroding our military machine, while the endlessly repeated combat tours are destroying the lives of our troops and their families. We are simply asking too much of them. To require a relatively small segment of the population to pay the price of war is corrupt and undemocratic. No amount of “We support our troops” eyewash can camouflage the fact that we are willing to watch a small group of young men and women do all our suffering for us. Either bring them home or find a way to spread the pain, to make it a truly national effort. If a war isn’t good enough for your children to die in, it’s not good enough for anyone’s children to die in.
Philip J. Burgess is a Vietnam veteran and poet. He lives in Missoula.
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