They are us
hippiemom
Posts: 3,326
We can't ignore wounded forever
Wednesday, March 07, 2007
Dick Feagler
Plain Dealer Columnist
Finally, this war has come home.
It's here to stay.
Twenty years from now, in a shopping mall, some kid will turn to his father and point and say, "That man has no legs, Daddy."
And the father will say, as all well-brought-up fathers say, "It's not polite to stare."
It's not polite, and it's damned inconvenient, too.
Or, to put it another way, it's more convenient to look away from this war and turn our attention to "American Idol" or the Anna Nicole Smith saga.
When the bodies began to come back from Iraq, there was a press embargo on shooting pictures of the coffins. The press bought into it.
The press should have howled. But the bashful media swallowed the administration line that photographing coffins of the dead might make the war look worse than it was. And that a shot of a flag-draped coffin might be an invasion of privacy.
The administration said many ridiculous things, and the press let them get away with it.
They said things like:
"THIS IS A VOLUNTEER ARMY. THESE PEOPLE ALL ENLISTED. THEY KNEW WHAT THEY WERE GETTING INTO."
It is by now obvious that the people who sent them to war had no clue what they were getting into.
But that's hardly a recruiting poster.
After nearly four years, we, as a country, don't know what we're doing in Iraq. We know what we'd like to do. We'd like to wave our hand and make it all go away. And, for too many of us, it has.
So, to our shame, we have learned to live with it.
We don't pay much attention anymore to the anchor-bunnies who tell us every morning that seven more soldiers have died in Iraq. Iraq is a long way away. And the killing, we feel, has little to do with our own back yards.
But they all die over here. They die at the gravesites of a thousand towns. They die when the VFW bugler plays off-key "Taps" in a lonely cemetery and the folded flag is delivered to the bereaved.
Our troops are not dying for Iraq. Who the hell from 154th and Kinsman wants to die for Iraq?
They are dying for each other. In a way that nobody who has not served will ever understand.
We sent them. Not Bush, not Rumsfeld. Us. They are carrying our flag. That means that whatever they do, they are representing you and me. Where the flag goes, you and I go, whether we like it or not. It is obscene to think of our soldiers as "they," as in "they knew what they were getting into." They are us.
Now we've learned of a new horror. When our soldiers come home, shattered and lame, we ignore their plight. The government, which sent them into battle, thinks of them as used-up Kleenex when they come back.
The Washington Post broke a story that told of the terrible living conditions in a part of Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Thank God for good journalism. But why did the Post have to discover this? We don't pay tax money to the Post.
After the story broke, the president fired the secretary of the Army and a couple of generals in charge of Walter Reed. He'd already gotten rid of his secretary of defense. A lot of baggage is going over the side. If you get the impression that he doesn't know what's going on - well, then that's the impression you get.
Now we've learned of a new horror. When our soldiers come home, shattered and lame, we ignore their plight. The government, which sent them into battle, thinks of them as used-up Kleenex when they come back.
The Washington Post broke a story that told of the terrible living conditions in a part of Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Thank God for good journalism. But why did the Post have to discover this? We don't pay tax money to the Post.
After the story broke, the president fired the secretary of the Army and a couple of generals in charge of Walter Reed. He'd already gotten rid of his secretary of defense. A lot of baggage is going over the side. If you get the impression that he doesn't know what's going on - well, then that's the impression you get.
Now we've learned of a new horror. When our soldiers come home, shattered and lame, we ignore their plight. The government, which sent them into battle, thinks of them as used-up Kleenex when they come back.
The Washington Post broke a story that told of the terrible living conditions in a part of Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Thank God for good journalism. But why did the Post have to discover this? We don't pay tax money to the Post.
After the story broke, the president fired the secretary of the Army and a couple of generals in charge of Walter Reed. He'd already gotten rid of his secretary of defense. A lot of baggage is going over the side. If you get the impression that he doesn't know what's going on - well, then that's the impression you get.
History, in the meantime, is up for grabs. We are all in the dark about what is to come. And so, obviously, is the president. He hasn't got a clue.
But he has managed to make history. He's made a war. And wars are history for the lives of the people who serve in them.
"Is that why you limp, Daddy?"
"I limp because I'm lucky," the father will reply.
http://www.cleveland.com/plaindealer/stories/index.ssf?/base/opinion/1173260181235700.xml&coll=2&thispage=1
Wednesday, March 07, 2007
Dick Feagler
Plain Dealer Columnist
Finally, this war has come home.
It's here to stay.
Twenty years from now, in a shopping mall, some kid will turn to his father and point and say, "That man has no legs, Daddy."
And the father will say, as all well-brought-up fathers say, "It's not polite to stare."
It's not polite, and it's damned inconvenient, too.
Or, to put it another way, it's more convenient to look away from this war and turn our attention to "American Idol" or the Anna Nicole Smith saga.
When the bodies began to come back from Iraq, there was a press embargo on shooting pictures of the coffins. The press bought into it.
The press should have howled. But the bashful media swallowed the administration line that photographing coffins of the dead might make the war look worse than it was. And that a shot of a flag-draped coffin might be an invasion of privacy.
The administration said many ridiculous things, and the press let them get away with it.
They said things like:
"THIS IS A VOLUNTEER ARMY. THESE PEOPLE ALL ENLISTED. THEY KNEW WHAT THEY WERE GETTING INTO."
It is by now obvious that the people who sent them to war had no clue what they were getting into.
But that's hardly a recruiting poster.
After nearly four years, we, as a country, don't know what we're doing in Iraq. We know what we'd like to do. We'd like to wave our hand and make it all go away. And, for too many of us, it has.
So, to our shame, we have learned to live with it.
We don't pay much attention anymore to the anchor-bunnies who tell us every morning that seven more soldiers have died in Iraq. Iraq is a long way away. And the killing, we feel, has little to do with our own back yards.
But they all die over here. They die at the gravesites of a thousand towns. They die when the VFW bugler plays off-key "Taps" in a lonely cemetery and the folded flag is delivered to the bereaved.
Our troops are not dying for Iraq. Who the hell from 154th and Kinsman wants to die for Iraq?
They are dying for each other. In a way that nobody who has not served will ever understand.
We sent them. Not Bush, not Rumsfeld. Us. They are carrying our flag. That means that whatever they do, they are representing you and me. Where the flag goes, you and I go, whether we like it or not. It is obscene to think of our soldiers as "they," as in "they knew what they were getting into." They are us.
Now we've learned of a new horror. When our soldiers come home, shattered and lame, we ignore their plight. The government, which sent them into battle, thinks of them as used-up Kleenex when they come back.
The Washington Post broke a story that told of the terrible living conditions in a part of Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Thank God for good journalism. But why did the Post have to discover this? We don't pay tax money to the Post.
After the story broke, the president fired the secretary of the Army and a couple of generals in charge of Walter Reed. He'd already gotten rid of his secretary of defense. A lot of baggage is going over the side. If you get the impression that he doesn't know what's going on - well, then that's the impression you get.
Now we've learned of a new horror. When our soldiers come home, shattered and lame, we ignore their plight. The government, which sent them into battle, thinks of them as used-up Kleenex when they come back.
The Washington Post broke a story that told of the terrible living conditions in a part of Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Thank God for good journalism. But why did the Post have to discover this? We don't pay tax money to the Post.
After the story broke, the president fired the secretary of the Army and a couple of generals in charge of Walter Reed. He'd already gotten rid of his secretary of defense. A lot of baggage is going over the side. If you get the impression that he doesn't know what's going on - well, then that's the impression you get.
Now we've learned of a new horror. When our soldiers come home, shattered and lame, we ignore their plight. The government, which sent them into battle, thinks of them as used-up Kleenex when they come back.
The Washington Post broke a story that told of the terrible living conditions in a part of Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Thank God for good journalism. But why did the Post have to discover this? We don't pay tax money to the Post.
After the story broke, the president fired the secretary of the Army and a couple of generals in charge of Walter Reed. He'd already gotten rid of his secretary of defense. A lot of baggage is going over the side. If you get the impression that he doesn't know what's going on - well, then that's the impression you get.
History, in the meantime, is up for grabs. We are all in the dark about what is to come. And so, obviously, is the president. He hasn't got a clue.
But he has managed to make history. He's made a war. And wars are history for the lives of the people who serve in them.
"Is that why you limp, Daddy?"
"I limp because I'm lucky," the father will reply.
http://www.cleveland.com/plaindealer/stories/index.ssf?/base/opinion/1173260181235700.xml&coll=2&thispage=1
"Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity." ~ MLK, 1963
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