USA TODAY International Edition
Enough with thanking us for our service
Honor troops before they sacrifice lives and limbs
Joseph Biden just became America’s fourth post- 9/ 11 “war president.” He now ends speeches with “May God protect our troops.” First lady Jill Biden even penned a children’s book titled, “Don’t Forget, God Bless Our Troops.” Their son Beau was a soldier — and his parents suspect that toxic “burn pit” exposure on his Iraq tour caused the brain cancer that later killed him. Both Jill and Joe repeatedly foreground military and veteran sacrifices. But just what is the best way for Americans to honor and respect veterans’ sacrifices?
One thing has become clear: America’s “thank you for your service” culture doesn’t help veterans — or society. Our military is continually misused, and no amount of pyrotechnics, flagwaving, priority airline boarding, discount nachos, bumper stickers or military flyovers can fix that.
For two decades, the U. S. government has knowingly sent its service members to self- perpetuating and selfdefeating wars. That’s not patriotism — that’s betrayal.
A more effective alternative to such lobotomized patriotism — and a better way to honor veterans’ service — is to get informed about how the troops are used and to dissent whenever the military is not used wisely. Historically, veterans sacrificed plenty to preserve the rights that Americans enjoy.
Return the favor. Get informed, demand transparency, prevent the squandering of such service.
Informed consent
Respect for our military must begin before they become veterans — before they’ve sacrificed limbs, lives and mental health supporting bad policy. Instead, respect military service by ensuring that everyone who dons a uniform — beginning the moment when minors approach recruiting tables in high school lunchrooms — has informed consent about what they’re actually signing up for.
Isn’t it fascinating that many teachers would never expose children to graphic images of dead soldiers, but those same students can be misled at schoolhouses turned de facto recruiting stations? Consequently, American youths could unwittingly become those very dead bodies.
We advocate for our Pentagon and the rest of America’s war- making machine to adopt a code consistent with the American Medical Association’s ethics opinion on informed consent: “Patients have the right to receive information and ask questions about recommended treatments so that they can make well- considered decisions about care.” The AMA guidance further states that physicians — in our scenario, war doctors — should present relevant information about the “burdens, risks, and expected benefits of all options.”
What, then, are some of the recruiting risks worth mentioning?
A survey by The Washington Post and the Kaiser Family Foundation reported that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan “have caused mental and emotional health problems in 31% of vets — more than 800,000 of them.”
And roughly 20 veterans and activeduty service members have committed suicide daily in the past several years. That’s “more suicides each year than the total American military deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq,” as a New York Times editorial board member wrote.
Divorce, alcohol, drugs, depression, “zombie” medication to mitigate endless deployments — all of it ought to be raised before any American enlists, but we do not know of a single instance where a recruiter discussed the risks of military service.
Paltry win/ loss record
Likewise, because it is one of the most traumatic, highly personal elements of combat, recruits should recognize that America’s war on terror has resulted in the deaths, often violent, of more than 100 Sept. 11’ s worth of civilians from Africa to Central Asia. War offers only needless suffering. Ignorance to its evils is more needless still.
Americans have hardly exercised informed consent for their own defense. So few even comprehend the immensity of Pentagon largesse — the largest segment of the discretionary budget — its tradeoffs, or that it’s more than the next 10 countries combined ( many of them U. S. allies). Informed consent’s absence extends to the Overseas Contingency Operations account, a slush fund designed by defense hawks to circumvent spending controls imposed on all other government agencies.
Such consent- free exorbitant expenditures might be excusable if they produced positive results. Only the U. S. military’s win/ loss record since World War II is paltry at best: a tortured tie in Korea; losses in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq; and embarrassments in Beirut and Somalia — hardly offset by the “big” wins in small wars like Grenada and Panama. That scarcely justifies such extravagant spending. Yet fearmongering from the military- industrial- congressional complex, and cynically crafted cries to “support the troops,” stifle patriotic dissent.
For now, it might fall on veterans themselves to disavow endless wars — the death and injury caused — and the unsustainable spending underpinning it all.
Retired Army Maj. Gen. Dennis Laich is author of “Skin in the Game: Poor Kids and Patriots.” Erik Edstrom, an infantry officer in Afghanistan, is the author of “Un- American: A Soldier’s Reckoning of our Longest War.” Both are senior fellows at the Eisenhower Media Network — an organization of independent military and national security veteran experts.