Thanking military personnel and veterans

Columnist David Brooks has written of Obama’s Christian realism, connecting Obama to the Reinhold Niebuhr. (“Obama’s Christian Realism,” New York Times, December 14, 2009)

Reinhold Niebuhr’s Christian journey began as a pacifist. The reality of horrendous evil in Nazi Germany changed Niebuhr’s thinking. Evil, he concluded, is real and sufficiently strong that sometimes one use every available means, including lethal force, to stop evil from gaining control.

Brooks heard a similar shift in President Obama’s speech on sending additional troops to Afghanistan last week.

Since retiring from the military, thanking military personnel and veterans for their service has become common, thanks rarely heard during my decades of active duty. Brooks’ essay and the recent, off-hand thanks from a retail clerk for my military service prompted three thoughts.

First, military service is just that, service to one’s neighbors abroad and especially at home. Being in the military costs wear and tear on one’s physical body (whether combat injuries or simply the rigors of military training) as well as wear and tear on one’s relationships (in terms of both one’s own mental health and the difficulties of trying to sustain long distance relationships). Being in the military costs many lost income, earning less for being willing to go into harm’s way than one could earn as a civilian. Of course, going into harm’s way costs some the ultimate price, their life, and others return permanently injured.

Second, genuine gratitude for the military finds far more meaningful expression than in spontaneous words, no matter how heartfelt or trite those words are. Genuine gratitude provides healthcare to veterans for all injuries caused by military service. Post-traumatic stress disorder represents perhaps the largest single part of that responsibility our nation has yet to meet adequately. Adequate care for women vets is probably a close second. Some VA medical centers and facilities are superb; others need substantial improvement. Availability and access also need to increase. Educating veterans to help them re-integrate into meaningful civilian employment is vital. Religious organizations must more pro-actively assisti veterans in dealing with the problem of dirty hands – having had the moral responsibility to do in combat things otherwise morally forbidden. For veterans who hold a particular religious tradition sacred, rituals that enable confession and receipt of forgiveness can powerfully affirm God's continuing acceptance of and love for the vet.

Third, civilian gratitude for those serving in the military must extend to an area where law forbids military personnel from speaking, i.e., objecting to national policy when the use of military force is morally unjustifiable. Here, religious organizations in general and the Church in particular have failed with respect to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. After eight long years in Afghanistan and six long years in Iraq, the U.S. has achieved almost nothing at the cost of tens of thousands of people killed and injured.

The Iraq surge failed, a conclusion that becomes more glaringly apparent every week. Centuries old hostilities and allegiances do not change over the course of a year because a few thousand additional troops deploy. Violence diminished while the U.S. had the perpetrators on the payroll. When the payments stopped, violence resumed.

The situation in Afghanistan is even more complex: deeper, more pervasive tribal loyalties; longer-standing animosities; a less forgiving terrain. Thirty thousand additional troops cannot, no matter how proficient or competent, bring peace to people who do not see themselves as a nation and who do not want to be a nation.

The Church must speak out more clearly and forcefully on this issue as a debt of gratitude for those who serve in the military, ready if necessary to sacrifice their own well-being in defense of the freedoms of others. Those who serve deserve our true gratitude. Our responsibility, not theirs, is to ensure their service represents morally valuable sacrifices in the cause of a more just, more peaceful world.