Thanks for What Service?

AuthorLueders, Bill
PositionCOMMENT - Essay

For the last two years, The Progressive has been located in the same building as the Wisconsin Veterans Museum, across the street from the state capitol. It is a free public museum packed into a ground-level space, with dioramas and other exhibits arrayed against the walls. There are guns, uniforms, and other artifacts from Wisconsin veterans, a tank and jeep from World War II, even a Huey helicopter that flew missions during the Vietnam War, dangling from the ceiling.

"Every veteran is a story," the museum proclaims, and its focus is on the men and women who fought. One exhibit tells the story of Arthur Cantwell of Shawano, Wisconsin. At age eighteen, fresh out of high school, he enlisted in the Wisconsin National Guard, less than two weeks after the United States entered World War I. He wrote in a letter home: "Remember, Mother, if I fail to come back, I only did my duty, and someone has got to pay the price. I was a volunteer, as I thought it was my duty to go.... "

We should all admire such sacrifice. Those who have served in this country's military deserve our respect, and our ongoing support.

Yet too often, support for veterans has come to mean support for the engagements to which they are deployed, and support for the institutions that send them to war.

How many times have we heard our soldiers thanked for "being over there to keep us safe"? It's a phony claim. Remember where over there is: Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, Yemen, Niger, Somalia, Syria. These are not wars of necessity. These are not noble causes. The people who kill and die in these foreign lands may be enormously brave but are not automatically heroes. We are being conned into affirming the wars as well as the warriors--which puts those who serve at greater peril.

In fact, some soldiers are not admirable at all. The conservative writer David French, a former Army major who fought in Iraq, argued as much in a recent column for the National Review. It ran under the headline, "Military-Worship Is Bad for the Military." Here's a taste:

"Though I've seen heroism in the military, I've also seen craven corruption, cynical exploitation of the public, and grotesque incompetence. If there is an iron law of human nature it's this: Absent accountability and oversight, all human institutions grow increasingly corrupt and incompetent.... Our more corrupt service members know how they're viewed and exploit that goodwill relentlessly."

French goes on to suggest that "too many...

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