SUPPORT OUR TROOPS
November 9, 2008
Deane Oliva

War is a reality! No matter what your ethical, conceptual stance, war is real. Mythically, we yearn to believe that military service builds character, extols the nation’s values and teaches one about life. We want to believe that it is a rite of passage, an initiation from adolescence into adulthood. One joins the Army to “fight for right” and to “become a man.” Ideally, we fantasize, when warriors return from war, they will be greeted as a heroes, ready to take their place as wise and valued members of society. This is the warrior archetype.

C: For the warrior’s experience to be transformative, it must also be indicative of personal valor.  But in contrast to the time when personal courage and strength made all the difference, in modern combat the best soldiers are often injured or killed. Behaving according to archaic principles of warrior-hood in the face of high speed weapons technology makes warriors more vulnerable instead of more heroic. Once a man who raced across a battlefield might become a hero by successfully dodging spears or arrows. Today, the same act would likely get him slaughtered in a storm of fire.  And when skill, intelligence, and nobility do not count, then nothing is proven by survival. [iii]

The difference between warrior and soldier is conceptually huge.  The warrior is valiant, ethical, and a revered member of society fighting to uphold its honor and safety.  A soldier’s motivation is often not as clear. In the most recent wars in which Americans have been deployed, the reasons for fighting have been vague, they have not involved homeland risk, the threat has not been experienced directly, the end goal was not cleanly defined, and the opportunities for individual achievement were minimal. The warrior seeking participant would likely have been frustrated and confused.  As one World War II combatant stated, “I went to war to show Hitler that Jews did have guts, that we are men.  What I didn’t know before the slaughter is that it didn’t’ matter. Not Hitler or any leaders on either side cared what happened to me.”[iv]

That has not always been the case.  In pre-modern war technology, war was an intimate activity.  Participants, charged with the fervor of a beloved cause, fought specific targets with intensity and focus, each cognizant of how much was personally and nationally at stake for them.  Their part in the war counted and the human lives they took were specific to the stated needs. 

As our technology has increased, war has lost its intimacy. 

[READINGS]

D: For example, the Gulf War (1990-1991) was lauded as an operation causing little loss to U S forces.  During hostilities, the United States suffered 148 combat deaths, 235 other deaths, and 467 wounded.  However, this low casualty rate comprised only what was immediately suffered during the short period of active combat.  As of May 2002, more than a decade later, the Veterans Administration had recognized a total of 262,586 veterans disabled due to Gulf War duties and 10,617 dead of combat-related injuries and illnesses since.  That raises the casualty rate of American forces in the Gulf War to the rather substantial figure of 30.8 percent.[v] 

E:  In the 2001 war in Afghanistan, the United States used cluster bombs so extensively that it became an international controversy.  In the first week of that war alone, B-1 bombers dropped 50 cluster bombs, scattering 10,100 bomblets.  According to the United Nations—as the cumulative result of the U S military presence in 2001, the Soviet Russian wars in the mid-1980s, and recent ecological crises such as a severe regional drought—Afghanistan has suffered a 40-70 percent loss of its forest cover, almost complete loss of all wetlands, and the compromise of its entire urban water supply, resulting in open sewage seeping into drinking water.  The mortality rate for children under age five is one in four, double the U.S. rate and due largely to diarrhea, respiratory infections, malnutrition, and vaccine-preventable diseases.  Afghanistan has 2 million war widows and tens of thousands of deaf-mute and disabled children and adults peddling on the streets. A total of 6 million people—one third of the population—had to flee the country during the wars.  Meanwhile in 2001 in Afghanistan, the United States suffered only 936 military deaths.[vi] 

When warriors return from war, they have fulfilled an honorable role. They have earned the respect of their country.  There are often a series of rituals which welcome them back to the civil society and shed them of their warrior-role.  In modern terminology, they are debriefed and re-integrated into their communities.  If the warrior has lived by the principles of their warrior role, there is a synergy which encourages a smooth role transition. 

American soldiers-not warriors- face huge obstacles to successful transition from military deployment to returning veteran status. The nature of warfare has changed.  Consider the following:

Almost all soldiers in Iraq know someone who was seriously injured or killed.  70% have seen dead or injured soldiers and almost half have had to uncover or handle human remains.  Even in Vietnam there were safe areas where people could go to rest and recuperate. That doesn’t happen in Iraq; every place is a war zone.[vii]  Although our generals did not expect the fighting to turn to guerrilla warfare, with the advent of IEDs, - Improvised Explosive Devices- and suicide bombers, military personnel are always wary of attack, attack often from non traditional, unexpected sources.  “Collateral damage,” referring to the injury and deaths of innocent civilians, women and children, is rampant.

[READINGS]

READING:

F:

A whole night,

Thrown down near a friend

Already butchered

With his mouth

Baring its teeth

Toward the full moon:

With the congestion

Of his hands

Penetrating my silence,

I’ve written letters

Full of love.

Never have I been

So

Attached to life.[i]

READING G:

There is one other wall, of course,

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder affects thousands upon thousands of our returning veterans, approximately 30 to 50% .  Factor in, as well, a suicide rate of 18 per day or almost 7000 per year and you have a devastating picture of the mental health of our veterans.[i]

[READINGS]

I: Another mourned, “I thought I was going crazy, waking up in a sweat trying to choke my wife, seeing signs of Charley around every corner when the weather was hot and steamy. I’d always kept my feelings to myself, but now I didn’t seem to have any feelings except anger.  I couldn’t get through a day without getting into a fight, and when I tried to numb the pain with alcohol, I jut got more angry and out of control.  I left my wife and kids because I was ashamed and afraid of what I was doing to them.”

Clearly, a great number of our veterans return with significant mental health problems. Edward Tick in his groundbreaking book, War and the Soul: Healing Our Nation’s Veterans from Post-traumatic Stress Disorder, offers the following

J: Our leadership’s refusal to accept responsibility for our wars helps explain the rage and mistrust veterans and their families often feel toward authority.  The young man or woman, after all, went to war in the nation’s name.   Except in rare instances, a soldier did not kill because he was criminal or insane or possessed by selfish motives.  To the contrary, and while striving under the most adverse conditions, he killed because the nation ordered him to do so in its service.  Ultimately, he killed because, otherwise, he and
his companions would be killed themselves.  The nation and its leaders defined the enemy, provided moral and ideological reasons to go to war, trained the soldier for it, and put him in the kill-or-be killed situation, and held responsible to be judged adversely if he did not.

Our society must accept the responsibility for its war making.  To the returning veteran, our leaders and people must say, “you did this in our name and because you were subject to our orders We lift the burden of your action from you and take it onto our shoulders.  We are responsible for you, for what
you did, and for the consequences.”

K: Without this transfer of responsibility, the veterans become the nation’s scapegoat and carries it secret grief and guilt for all of us.  Psychologically and socially, veterans often crawl into the dark corners of our culture and collapse under the crippling effect of carrying the moral and spiritual burdens of an entire nation alone.  This state of affairs helps us explain the degree to which veterans become ill with their feelings.  Given our nation’s denial of responsibility and disowning of suffering, the only socially acceptable role left for them to collapse into is that of “disabled veteran.” It is this abandonment of them, as much as the war experience,  that causes PTSD.

Tick suggests a four stage approach to reintegration of our soldiers into society.  First, there must be cleansing.  In order to heal, the veteran must safely descend back into the hellish memories that hold him prisoner. If he is stuck, unable or unwilling to re-experience the actions that have hurt his soul, in this descent, the veteran must recapture the warrior in the self, the person who went to war for all the morally positive reasons. Tick notes:  “For the survivor’s soul to heal, he or she must revisit the experience of war in a way that tells the truth and frees the heart from bondage to the past. The formula for successful return can be called an imaginal initiation into warriorhood. This is a demanding process that requires several steps.  Even as war and violence are disowned, the original call to service must be reaffirmed, and the universal pattern of the warrior that has been damaged must be restored. Along the way, the veteran studies the history and meaning of warriorhood, practices its traditions, and evaluates his past experiences in this light.  He faces those people, places and memories he most fears . He stares his demons in the face without resorting to violence.  He does service that redresses the wounds he caused.  He reshapes his identity in ways that include both the mythic dimensions and the difficult realities of his experience. The new identity that emerges constitutes a rebirth. He eventually achieves an initiation through both inner change and outer deed and ritual. Achieving inner warriorhood is a mark of a fully developed personality. [i]

As the warrior proceeds through this process, the he or she cleanses the self of its demons. One successful ritual in this process is the use of a sweat lodge, which can provide a much needed symbolic transition from combat zone to a world at peace.

The second step is storytelling, reframing the personal venture into the community fabric.  Stories often reveal patterns and connections that might be missed without this purposeful activity.  The common threads weave together, binding the participants in a public addition to the collective history. It should be noted here, that very few veterans offer their story spontaneously. In fact, for those who freely share their adventures and also carry their demons, they are likely to become addicted to the “high” of the effect and generalize their behavior to other risk taking behaviors. It is only after the cleansing process that they are ready to authentically share.

Tick makes a strong plea for the community to take on the moral responsibility of the story. With the release of that responsibility the veteran will be more able to dig deeper into the feelings that are buried below the surface and to begin the healing process. This is the third step. “The social group must not only witness the stories of its warriors; it must also accept responsibility for their deeds during war and their condition afterward.”[ii]

The group must take responsibility for the betrayal of the warrior.  Most often, the war that soldiers experience is not the war that they thought that they were signing up for. Their mental state and reception when they return, are astounding, unexpected developments. Is it no wonder that drug addiction, homelessness, divorce and abuse are so elevated in this population.  Society, that is, WE must step up to the plate and reclaim these warriors.

            The final rehabilitative step is a full reclaiming of the warrior mentality. 

[READING]

L: The final step in the long road home for the veteran is completing this initiation as a warrior.  A veteran does not become a warrior merely for having gone to war.  A veteran becomes a warrior when he learns to carry his war skills and his vision in mature ways.  He becomes a warrior when he has been set right with life again.  A warrior’s first priority is to protect life rather than destroy it.  He serves his nation in peace as well as in war making and dissuades his people from suffering the scourges of war unless absolutely necessary.  He uses the fearlessness he has developed to help keep sanity, generosity and order alive in his culture. A warrior disciplines the violence within himself.  Internally and externally, he stares violence in the face and makes it back down. A warrior serves higher spiritual and moral principles which he places higher than himself. The role of warrior has a high, noble and honorable status.  [iii]

World War I ended on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month in 1918. A year later, Woodrow Wilson proclaimed November 11, Armistice Day in the hope that it would be associated with the quest for world peace.  The modern era has not lived up to that hope. World peace is still an illusion, but right now, we have a more immediate quest at our doorstep. We must work to bring peace to the veterans.  We must not accept this collateral damage. I urge us not to accept the substandard treatment at Walter Reed Hospital where the typical soldier is required to file 22 documents with eight different commands to enter and exit the system.  Sixteen different information systems are used to process the forms, but few can communicate with one another. As of the beginning of this year, the Army’s three personnel databases could not [sic] read each other’s files and could not [sic] interact with each other.  [iv]

I implore us not to simply smile knowingly when on NPR we hear the story of Barry Cooper. Mr.Cooper is a former Narcotics Officer, who is so known for making successful drug busts that he travels around the country training officers.   When he does this training, after he finishes his workshop, he goes out with a squad car. He promises that if he does not make one arrest in that night the whole training is free.  In all the years that he has been offering this gimmick, he has never given away a free training. How does he do it?  Well, he says, first, he looks for a veteran’s license plate since he knows so many of them came back with a habit………[v]

Support our troops. That is the title of today’s sermon and it is the sound-byte that I would like to leave you with.  Support our troops. They are our sons, our daughters, our families, our future.  On this day we want to do more than “honor” our veterans we want to offer them the support which they so poignantly deserve.