{"id":35835,"date":"2013-05-27T08:38:15","date_gmt":"2013-05-27T12:38:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=35835"},"modified":"2013-05-27T08:38:15","modified_gmt":"2013-05-27T12:38:15","slug":"sebastian-junger-on-sharing-the-burden-of-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=35835","title":{"rendered":"Sebastian Junger on sharing the burden of war"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the Washington Post<\/a>, Sebastian Junger, the author of “Restepo” and “War” makes recommendations for trying to bridge the gap between the country’s warriors and those in whose name they go to war. I say “bridge” because it’s fairly obvious to me that the gap can be bridged but never closed completely.<\/p>\n

Perhaps war is so obscene that even the people who supported it don\u2019t want to hear the details or acknowledge their role. Soldiers face myriad challenges when they return home, but one of the most destructive is the sense that their country doesn\u2019t quite realize that it \u2014 and not just the soldiers \u2014 went to war. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That gap can’t be closed mostly because the folks who don’t go to war want to keep that comfortable distance from that which is done at their behest. So Junger writes that the burden of war can be shifted from the shoulders of the warriors to those other folks.<\/p>\n

Our enormously complex society can\u2019t just start performing tribal rituals designed to diminish combat trauma, but there may be things we can do. The therapeutic power of storytelling, for example, could give combat veterans an emotional outlet and allow civilians to demonstrate their personal involvement. On Memorial Day or Veterans Day, in addition to traditional parades, communities could make their city or town hall available for vets to tell their stories. Each could get, say, 10 minutes to tell his or her experience at war.<\/p>\n

Attendance could not be mandatory, but on that day \u201cI support the troops\u201d would mean spending hours listening to our vets. We would hear a lot of anger and pain. We would also hear a lot of pride. Some of what would be said would make you uncomfortable, whether you are liberal or conservative, military or nonmilitary, young or old. But there is no point in having a conversation about war that is not completely honest.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Of course, it will never happen because those who have kept their veterans at arms length won’t bother to participate in this particular “ritual” because they’ve done their part. The anti-war crowd protested the war and tried to bring the troops, the right fulfilled their obligation by putting a yellow ribbon on the ass-end of their SUV, so those other people should listen to the stories, you know those other people who don’t watch the Military Channel.<\/p>\n

For example there’s this comment in response to the Post article;<\/p>\n

Not true. I opposed both wars and wrote my representatives accordingly. In addition, I joined in a protest against starting the war in Iraq. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the Washington Post, Sebastian Junger, the author of “Restepo” and “War” makes recommendations for trying … Sebastian Junger on sharing the burden of war<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35835","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-support-the-troops"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35835","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35835"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35835\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}