Today I honor the service of every military member lost in wars. I honor my grandfather, who lived through WWI but was wounded in France. I honor my father, who served in the Pacific in WWII, and returned with undiagnosed PTSD. I honor the fallen and those who loved and lost them.
I honor the tens of thousands of military veterans, and their families, who came home, but live with visible and invisible wounds.
I believe being a warrior is an honorable profession; the urge to protect what we hold dear is a valuable human instinct. I believe there are times, at our current level of consciousness, when we as a country must defend our own interests. When Hitler was poised to conquer all of Europe, I believe we had to step in and defend our closest ally, Great Britain. After the attacks on 9/11, I think it was critical that we pursued Osama Bin Laden and dismantled Al Queda.
I also believe the best way for us to honor our troops is to follow the policy of pursuing peace whenever possible. In most cases, it is possible to choose alternate ways of managing conflict. Most Americans look back on my generation’s war, Vietnam, as a disaster that accomplished nothing. As of last year, 48 percent of Americans believe the invasion of Iraq was a mistake, based on erroneous reports that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. There’s no question Saddam was an evil dictator, but despite our early naive assumptions, the Iraqi people did not welcome us with open arms, and more than anyone else, they have paid the price.
War is expensive by every measure.
The numbers below represent American military and total military deaths for each major conflict the United States has been involved in since 1914.
WWI – American Deaths – 53,402 Total Military Deaths – 10,670,868
WWII – American Deaths – 291,557 Total Military Deaths – 50,000,000
Korean War – American Deaths – 33,739 Total Military Deaths – 995,025
Vietnam War – American Deaths – 47,434 Total Military Deaths -1,462,050
First Gulf War – American Deaths – 148 Total Military Deaths – 22,848
Afghanistan War – American Deaths – 2,257 Total Military Deaths – 53,925 (To Date)
Iraq War – America Deaths – 4,491 Total Military Deaths – 184,512
Of course, the human cost of war extends far beyond military deaths.
The Watson Institute of Brown University attempts to quantify civilian deaths from various wars, as well as the monetary costs. The Institute estimates 480,000 civilians have perished as a direct result of America’s post-911 wars, while several times that number have died as an indirect result of these conflicts.
The Institute puts the dollar cost of our post-911 wars at $5.9 Trillion, “including past expenditures and obligations to care for veterans of these wars throughout their lifetimes.”
When policies are put in place that do not serve our greater good, it’s always useful to ask one question. Who benefits?
President Dwight D. Eisenhower, a former 5-star general who led the American forces on D-Day, saw that after the Korean War, American greatly expanded its standing armed forces, and the military entered into partnerships with powerful companies whose sole purpose was to manufacture arms (and in years since, to provide military contractors in war zones). In his parting words as President, Eisenhower warned of the dangers of what he called “the Military-Industrial Complex.”
Who benefits from war? Military contractors benefit. The politicians who accept financial support from military contractors benefit. Leaders who build their careers on military adventures benefit.
We have not yet withdrawn from Afghanistan, and already the sabre-rattling has begun again in Washington, as the current administration lays the groundwork for a war in Iran.
All over America, young men and women whose families are not wealthy, who don’t see a university education in their future, choose the military path toward upward mobility. I pray that the men who wield power in this country, the men who are safe and secure in their mansions, will decide not to use these young people as cannon fodder. I hope they will be wise enough to truly honor our troops, by making war a last resort.
For myself, I am holding a vision that world peace is possible. It will happen when enough ordinary citizens of the earth hold to that vision, creating a tipping point toward a global consensus that war is never an acceptable solution.