That’s the cover of this week’s Time magazine. TIME’s Mark Thompson reports: “Never has the U.S. public been so separate, so removed, so isolated from the people it pays to protect it….. Most Americans have not served in uniform, no longer have a parent who did and are unlikely to encourage their children to enlist…. ” It really is a good article and if you remember how, you should buy the magazine. the article contains mountains of facts to support Thompson’s contention, if you need facts to tell you what you’ve seen with your own two eyes.
Here’s a link to the article, but you need a subscription to read it all, that’s why I recommend the magazine. I don’t quite know what to make of it, The article seems to be a call to dismantle the military system we have now while at the same time it praises the umbrella of protection we currently enjoy.
Me? Personally? I’m proud to have been a part of this new system since before the fall of Saigon and the job that we did rebuilding the military might of the United States from our experience in Vietnam and I wouldn’t change a thing. But yes there is a divide between the warriors and the protected. No where was it more evident to me on the streets of Silver Spring maryland one night when I was buying drinks for some veterans of the Battle of the Ranch House who were rehabbing at Walter Reed. Their scars were obvious, but didn’t insulate them from the civilian punks who tried, like young gunfighters, to make their names by taking down some real warriors. Like it’s a game.
Thanking our troops for their service has become almost reflexive in the U.S., in part because of memories of Vietnam. Uniformed soldiers striding through airports are offered outstretched hands and words of gratitude; their tabs for sandwiches or beers are often picked up by strangers before the GIs have asked for the bill. But the sentiment reflects the problem: the public has scant idea of just how much the military has given since 9/11 beyond a vague sense that some 6,300 have died.
Not even a little of the fault for the divide rests on the media who don’t hesitate to highlight the anomalies of Abu Ghraib, the “Kill team” and what they thought happened at Hadditha – that helps to alienate the public from the military.
Then you have peckerwoods like Matthis “educating” public school students on things he’s never experienced. And the Jesse MacBeths who Eric May still thinks was telling the truth.
Look at the Nidal Hasan shootings at Fort Hood – the media was quick to jump on the untrue story that Hasan was a veteran of deployments to Iraq and had snapped at the thought of another deployment. Until TAH put that lie to rest. Politicians in Arizona were quick to tie the shooter of a congresswoman to the military…another lie TAH revealed.
It’s not the truth about the military that divides us from the general public, it’s the lies and the fantasies. And I’m pretty sure if Time takes an honest look at itself, they’ll find a bit of culpability for their own actions over the last ten years, too.
