Johann Christoph Arnold writing for All Gulf Vets Magazine on Listening to the Wounded: Facing the incoming from Iraq:
It is easy to forget that it has been more than a year since we sent our young men and women into battle in Iraq. At the time, much was made of how we on the home front should support the troops on the front lines. Since then, a thousand of these brave men and women have lost their lives. The grief is overwhelming. Each one has a story that needs to be told – of courage, patriotism, fear, love and desire to serve one's country.
Mr. Arnold said a lot there. The "Support the Troops" slogan, repeated by pro-war folks ad infinitum, is of absolutely no help to those coming home with life altering injuries and/or missing limbs. Such slogans are only good for partisan politics, bullying those who disagree and standard jingoism. Long-term support, of actual substance, will be required to help these men and women get on with the business of living.
Already at least 6,000 severely wounded soldiers have come home from Iraq. There will be more. We have hardly begun to feel their presence, but over the next years we will see them in towns and cities across America. Such wounds are a burden that few can bear. Families will be broken. Many returning soldiers will be abandoned and rejected. They will discover that the skills they learned in the military are of little use in civilian life. Many will go through deep anger and bitterness toward the society that sent them to war.
Non-profit organizations and veterans organizations are going to feel this impact in the very near future. If certain people get their way next year, more American men and women will be losing life and limb in a pointless war in Iran and possibly Syria.
I sincerely hope that those who spent countless hours berating those of us opposed to putting these men and women in harm's way will at least spend an equal amount of time assisting the injured as they transition to a new, forever altered existence. These men and women deserve far more than the pro-war cheerleading of armchair warriors, chickenhawks and liberventionists.
War is a far more serious a matter than its fans and cheerleaders can possibly comprehend. More than a thousand good men and women are gone, families have been shattered and thousands are scarred for life. Decades after the men and women who demanded this conflict have pushed this affair into the deep, dark recesses of their minds – the dead will still be dead and the arms and legs will still be gone. These men and women are going to need more than the empty slogans of childish cliquish conformity to work through their pain and loss.