Compromised positions

Okay, so, what am I supposed to do? I am angry (yeah I know, but I have been angry a lot less recently). Thing is, now I'm angry about something I want to do something about. What I am angry is fallout from activities I have known to be wrong since they raised their ugly little heads a decade ago and all the baggage from years of raging against that evil will not just drop away.

So, bear with me here.

I have opposed the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan since the very beginning (on 9/17/01, NPR broadcast my commentary saying that the events of 9/11 were not the basis for a war). When the President shifted the focus from Afghanistan (where there was at least some shred of legitimacy) to Iraq (where there was none), I joined the protest of that action with thousands of others. All to naught. What can a person like me can do to thwart the juggernaut of the military/security industry once its saliva has begun to run?

And now the war is over. The military has achieved its compromised objectives, the military/security industry has squeezed all that it can from the effort, we have declared victory, the troops are coming home, and the specter of war no longer hovers over us.

Really?

Perhaps it's unfair to say so, but I think one of the most infuriating civilian responses here at home to the war was the expression of "support" for the soldiers sent to Afghanistan and Iraq by attaching $1.98 magnetic contrivances - made to look like yellow ribbons - to our vehicles.

What is interesting is that the troops really did not need the support of the citizenry during the war. They were given all the support they needed by the military in the form of training, ordnance, armor, sustenance, succor and the most advanced combat medicine available to a force in a theater of conflict. The magnets were more about the person who bought the magnet than they were about the benificiaries.

But now the situation is quite different. The January 20th issue of The Week magazine (http://theweek.com/article/index/223423/a-tough-homecoming-for-war-veterans), presented a succinct report on the status of the 2.3 million troops who fought in this conflict in the cradle of civilization and the cold ancient mountains that loomed above it. Here is the long and short of it:
* 6179 dead
* 47,000 wounded
* 210,000 treated for PTSD
* 218,000 diagnosed with traumatic brain damage
* Due to the perfect storm of IEDs and greatly improved combat medicine we now have thousands living with significant disabilities, some missing one or two or even three limbs, others with disabilities made more grave by a combination of injuries.
 
This is bad enough, but then there is the toll taken but unrecorded, estimated in numbers tragic in their possibilities: suicides estimated to be occurring once every 80 minutes; domestic violence on the increase - transmitting the damage to another generation. Homelessness, incarceration, mental illness, substance abuse - this is the legacy of the pretense and prevarication that took us into this war.

On top of all of this suffering is an even more compelling problem: there are 900,000 disability claims backlogged at the VA. Almost 1 million people whose disabilities have arisen out of their service to their country - many of them deployed repeatedly, three, four, five times over the course of the war - waiting until the overwhelmed bureaucracy of an underfunded agency can even get to the point of denying them service.

I am not a veteran. I have served in no wars. I have never been wounded in the name of my country, witnessed the horror of the impact of war in a countryside, lived with the anxiety of never knowing when an IED would pop up and destroy me, or worse, my friends.

But as much as I have hated and raged against the wars this country has engaged in, I have never turned against the people who were ordered into those conflicts - often conscripted and unwillingly.

Sadly, my country has. Uncomfortable with the legacy of war, wishing to put conflict and pain behind us, rushing to shift the money once spent on war into projects more appealing to the voters back home, fearing the very people we trained as killers because they have come home with that training, we - both citizens and our elected leaders - have left them, ignored them and abandoned them again and again after every war this country has waged since its inception.

The history of our country is filled with the protests and pleas from the veterans of our wars to keep the promises we made to them when we sent them to fight for us.

Not again. I watched this happen (and even allowed myself to become inured to their plight) with the Vietnam Veterans of my own youth. I cannot watch it happen again.

So,here is what I would like to do. I am asking everyone who bought a ribbon magnet to do one simple thing: If you still have your magnet, put it in an envelope and send it to your federal government. Tell them we cannot abandon our veterans again.

Regardless of my own feelings about the conflict in the Middle East, this is not a partisan effort. But you can be as partisan as you want in executing it. Just send in your magnet.

If you hate Democrats and want to blame it all on them, you can send your package to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid:
The Honorable Harry Reid
United States Senate
522 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510-2803

You can even skip the Honorable part if you can't manage it.

On the other hand, if you would like to deliver the responsibility to the Republicans, it's the Speaker of the House you want to send the package to:
The Honorable John A. Boehner
United States House of Representatives
1011 Longworth House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515-3508

Or you can just send it to the one of the above you think will be more responsive. In the envelope put a note explaining why you are sending the magnet, or put this essay, or simply write "Never Again" in large print on a piece of paper.

If you have thrown your magnet away, buy one, draw one, have your kids draw one, have your kid's class draw thirty of them, put them in a package and put it in the mail. Just send it

Please.

Then drop an email to isentmine@ribbonreturn.com. I will keep a tally and let you know how things are going. You can also join the group "I returned my Ribbon" on Facebook, and follow #Ribbon_Return on Twitter.

If you want to send a link to this post to others, please do. Send it to whomever you think might respond. Send it to as many people as you can. Even to the folks you think it might piss off or offend. Because I believe in my heart of hearts, that no one wants this to happen.

Not again. Not ever again.