Dan Gallagher - December 13, 2005
Veteran's Viewpoint
VETERAN’S VIEWPOINT
Tuesday December 13, 2005
This is Dan Gallagher with Veteran’s Viewpoint.
A little more than a month ago, I was involved in putting together our annual Veterans Day ceremony here in Missoula. It was an exceptional event, if I must say so myself; dignified and very emotional.
The special theme of this year's ceremony was "They Also Serve Who Stand and Wait", a tribute and acknowledgement to the families of those GIs who go off tho fight history's wars. It was our emphasis on that theme that made the ceremony so special. The comments received in the minutes and weeks after the ceremony were overwhelmingly positive.
But there was a minute amount of criticism that the ceremony, by not dwelling on the heroics of war and the righteousness of the foreign policy that sent American soldiers to each of our wars, was almost a backhanded slap in the face of our soldiers who are now in harm's way in the Middle East..
In other words, if we support our troops, it follows (to some people) that we will speak nothing but a Limbaugh-esque backing of Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld--and of the war they have given us, or more correctly, that they have laid upon our children's futures.
So, in thumbnail fashion, let me tell you again what I believe this much-discussed support is really all about.
Support our troops! We hear it all the time. But, just what does it mean? There may be various answers to that question, but I believe that they all assemble into a composite conclusion. At the most basic level, support for our soldiers means writing to (calling, e-mailing) them. It means sending them packages of stuff from home--you know, the home-baked cookies at Christmas time or the photos of family or... well, you know. But SUPPORT means a whole lot more if it is to have any lasting impact on our soldiers now facing--or returning from--war's very real dangers.
'Support' means lobbying our governmental officials so that our soldiers will not unnecessarily suffer due to a lack of supplies and equipment. 'Support' must mean being there for them when they come home--not simply showing up at the airport, but BEING THERE for them and their families once they are at home and need a helping hand. It means helping their wives, children, or other family members when there is a problem at home, for example, opening a clogged drain or shoveling a snowy driveway. And 'support' means making every possible effort to assure that these returning soldiers' future needs will be met by the government that sent them to war--that, as I've said before, the yellow ribbons of today will not turn into the red tape of these veterans' tomorrows. And, in a larger sense, 'support' means working for a reasoned political agenda in which the likelihood that these contemporary veterans will ever have to return to--or send their own children to--a future war is minimalized.
'Support' for our troops has nothing to do with what political stance we take regarding the relative merits of the war now being fought, nothing to do with how many tears we shed on Veterans Day or how many times we wave Old Glory.
'Support' is all about assuring that these soldiers will be respected for their service, and that they will be appropriately cared for as veterans. And that is ALL it is about!
Finally--and this is a pretty rough segui--I hear that there is now an ongoing argument in the hallowed halls of government about how much we should speak our or rule against the use of torture by Americans and America's allies in the effort to extract information from those that we designate our terrorist enemies.
This is actually a subject for discussion in which there might be alternative conclusions. You've got to be kidding me! In a nation that, with a fair amount of legitimacy, prides itself in upholding principles of fairness, decency, and dignity in our treatment of our fellow humans, can you believe that some within our highest levels of leadership are arguing that it would be in opposition to our national needs and interest to forego or condemn torture of captured enemy personnel?
What part of this doesn't Bush, Cheney, or Rumsfeld understand?: We violate the central focus of our very being as a free people when we even consider officially accepting torture as an extension of government policy. How can we engage in torture and, at the same time, claim any degree of moral superiority over those whom we condemn as terrorists?
C'mon, folks, this 'heaven-rescued land' must stand on higher ground than the place where legitimatized torture dwells, or we will cease to have any claim to
God's blessings that Irving Berlin wrote about and which most Americans like to believe exist.
Which leads me to thoughts of the Christmas season we are now fully into. Whatever your belief system, this is the time of year when we turn to thoughts of
peace and love and justice and hope and, yes, redemption. At the individual level, Christmas can help nurture a belief that we can still reach above our mundane existence toward a higher standard. We can dream of and, hopefully, work for a world free of war; where no more American sons and daughters--or the sons and daughters of any other nation will spend a Christmas day (or any other day) killing or being killed by one another. We can look toward the day when there will be no more war veterans, because there will be no more war. A faroff dream, perhaps, but Christmas seems to make us think it is within the realm of possibility.
In Dickens' "A Christmas Carol", Scrooges's nephew Fred sums up the meaning and spirit of the Christmas season quite well. He refers to Christmas as a "kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; a time when men and women seem, by one consent, to freely open their shut-up hearts to their fellow creatures.
In addressing veterans needs and issues, as well as other issues that we face to day in supporting our troops, for example, we can heed these words. But especially, we can heed them in our own daily lives.
So merry Christmas and a successful 2006 to each of you. And, as Tiny Tim observed: "God bless us, everyone."
This is Dan Gallagher with Veteran's Viewpoint.
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