What does our military mean to us?

The comments to my post about Lisa Pagan (original article here) are fascinating and show conflicting ideas about our soldiers and the role of the military.

I'll first point out that the military does honor many requests for hardship and exemption:

Since September 11, 2001, the Army has recalled about 25,000 soldiers. Nearly half requested a delay or a full exemption. Some just wanted to finish their school semester before reporting. Others had financial or medical problems that made it difficult to report for duty.

The Army says it granted nearly nine out of 10 delay requests and six out of 10 requests for exemption.

but there still needs to be addressed the undercurrents of why Lisa Pagan and her actions arouse such emphatic reactions.

There is the entire morass about women in the service, whether or not they get unfair treatment, whether they use their biological abilities to escape service or are harmed by them. The conflicts are real and unsolvable.

But what do we expect our military to achieve? What do we think they represent to us? Do those who want our soldiers to be heroic acknowledge their human frailties? Do those who have never been in the service understand the pride and sense of commitment and accomplishment soldiers have and understand the horror and grit of real war?

When is a soldier actually done with his/her service, when they are honorably discharged? When should the government consider itself to have been paid back for training a soldier? How many years does one not have kids, not plan too far ahead, not commit to an educational plan, a job because one might just possibly be called back? How many tours of duty are too much, 4? 5? 7? Are young people who voluntarily sign up told the complete truth about how this action will affect their lives, how they will be owned by the government apparently forever? How long can the stop-loss program keep soldiers who are done with their commitment? What does the misuse of this affect the morale of the troops?

When you hear soldiers talking about being sent back to Iraq with severe medical or mental issues, when the tours of duty are relentless and stateside times are shorter and shorter, when they lie about how soldiers died in battle, lie for propaganda's sake, when memos are leaked exposing the plan to deny diagnosis of brain damage for soldiers hurt in battle, when PTSD is ignored, when desertions and suicides by soldiers rise alarmingly, when Veteran's hospitals are moldy, neglected, shred medical documents, and try to cut costs rather than help, when wounded soldiers are deliberately refused help on confusing paperwork, and homelessness for vets has become a real issue, does this encourage a proud and heroic military stance? You think soldiers want to literally put their lives on the line to be then treated like used tissues and tossed aside?

To those who think we are the mightest super power on earth and have the military power to prove it, you haven't been paying attention. Those who get angry when accosted with the brutal facts about waste and incompetence in the military are in denial. Those who immediately attack soldiers who speak out against the war, who denounce their patriotism as fake, mock those who have moral qualms, expose their own deep insecurities. The military has been forced to accept rabid white supremists and radical religious crusaders because recruitment is so low. They have been forced to send soldiers weakened by several endless tours of duty back again into horrifically stressful situations. Soldiers have been refusing to patrol.

The reasons why we even invaded Iraq, why we are in Iraq and Afghanistan now are ever changing, the reasons for not leaving murky. The Iraqi people do not want us there. We have promised much and delivered little to the Afghanis. Victory is undefinable and often tied to how the Vietnam war ended.

We are in two unwinnable wars with a broken military and out of control spending.

It's finally time for an assessment.

Why on earth would any soldier willingly step back into such a meaningless war?

Why?

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Update:

Veterans for America:
19 More Months in Iraq: How to Bring Immediate Relief

As President Obama finalizes his Iraq withdrawal plans, Veterans for America urges President Obama to address the dire conditions on military bases and in communities here at home. Multiple tours, inadequate dwell time between tours, the continued use of stop loss orders, and the heavy use of the National Guard all risk further damaging our military and undermining the faith that servicemembers and their families have in their civilian and military leaders. Many of our brave servicemembers and their families need immediate relief.

At least a dozen Army Brigade Combat Teams (BCTs) are scheduled to deploy to Iraq before the majority of troops are withdrawn. Virtually all units will be on at least their second tour and many will not have had adequate rest between their tours. Louisiana, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, Oregon, Tennessee, Texas, and Wisconsin will all send citizen soldier BCT’s to Iraq over the next several months.

Oregon is scheduled to send the 41st BCT to war for a third time since 9/11. Many Oregon Guard members have not had the three years at home between tours that President Obama promised while campaigning.

As we continue to churn our troops for another 19 months, VFA urges civilian and military leaders to provide adequate dwell time for every servicemember and to cease our heavy reliance overseas on our National Guard. Our troops, their families, and their communities deserve no less.

The day after and the day after that

It's not just the anniversary of the war in Iraq but everyday that we will look for news of our soldiers and the fighting. It may have 'slipped' ever so conveniently off the front pages of our mainstream news, but we will never forgive nor ever forget.

Excellent coverage the war and history of Iraq:

By Blue Girl of Blue Girl, Red State

Pygalgia

DistributorCap

And on the Winter Soldier event:

Iraq Veterans Against the War

Bill W. of Crooks and Liars:

Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan was a 4-day event from March 13-16 in DC that brought together veterans from across the country to testify about their experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan. Although the news media has unsurprisingly ignored the event much as they did its predecessor in 1971, this time we have digital media and the intertubes to document it and bring it to a wider audience.

Bill W. has a transcript from a soldier Will Prysner:

Those who send us to war do not have to pull a trigger or lob a mortar round. They do not have to fight the war. They merely have to sell the war. They need a public who is willing to send their soldiers into harm’s way and they need soldiers who are willing to kill or be killed without question. They can spend millions on a single bomb, but that bomb only becomes a weapon when the ranks in the military are willing to follow orders to use it. They can send every last soldier anywhere on earth, but there will only be a war if soldiers are willing to fight, and the ruling class: the billionaires who profit from human suffering care only about expanding their wealth, controlling the world economy, understand that their power lies only in their ability to convince us that war, oppression, and exploitation is in our interests. They understand that their wealth is dependent on their ability to convince the working class to die to control the market of another country. And convincing us to kill and die is based on their ability to make us think that we are somehow superior. Soldiers, sailors, marines, airmen, have nothing to gain from this occupation.

The vast majority of people living in the US have nothing to gain from this occupation. In fact, not only do we have nothing to gain, but we suffer more because of it. We lose limbs, endure trauma, and give our lives. Our families have to watch flag draped coffins lowered into the earth. Millions in this country without healthcare, jobs, or access to education must watch this government squander over $450 million a day on this occupation. Poor and working people in this country are sent to kill poor and working people in another country to make the rich richer, and without racism soldiers would realize that they have more in common with the Iraqi people than they do with the billionaires who send us to war.

Hipparchia of Over the Cliff, Onto the Rocks and her other blog: War Without Comment. Watch the videos about soldiers in Vietnam speaking then and now. A devastatingly true comment made (3:23 1st video) made by an ex-soldier:

"I've been all over the world and the most politically ignorant people of any country I've ever been to is the U.S.A."

Time to find out what is going on. Ignorance will be no excuse for the horrors done in our name.

The veterans begin to speak louder and as one

“The war in Iraq is not covered to its potential because of how dangerous it is for reporters to cover it,” said Liam Madden, a former Marine and member of the group Iraq Veterans Against the War. “That’s left a lot of misconceptions in the minds of the American public about what the true nature of military occupation looks like.”

Iraq Veterans Against the War argues that well-publicised incidents of U.S. brutality like the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and the massacre of an entire family of Iraqis in the town of Haditha are not the isolated incidents perpetrated by “a few bad apples”, as many politicians and military leaders have claimed. They are part of a pattern, the group says, of “an increasingly bloody occupation”.

“The problem that we face in Iraq is that policymakers in leadership have set a precedent of lawlessness where we don’t abide by the rule of law, we don’t respect international treaties, so when that atmosphere exists it lends itself to criminal activity,” argues former U.S. Army Sergeant Logan Laituri, who served a tour in Iraq from 2004 to 2005 before being discharged as a conscientious objector.

Laituri told IPS that precedent of lawlessness makes itself felt in the rules of engagement handed down by commanders to soldiers on the front lines. When he was stationed in Samarra, for example, he said one of his fellow soldiers shot an unarmed man while he walked down the street.

“The problem is that that soldier was not committing a crime as you might call it because the rules of engagement were very clear that no one was supposed to be walking down the street,” he said. “But I have a problem with that. You can’t tell a family to leave everything they know so you can bomb the shit out of their house or their city. So while he definitely has protection under the law, I don’t think that legitimates that type of violence.”

[snip]

In one of the most famous antiwar speeches of the era, Kerry concluded: “Someone has to die so that President Nixon won’t be — and these are his words — ‘the first president to lose a war’. We are asking Americans to think about that, because how do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?”

Nicosia says U.S. citizens and veterans find themselves in a similar situation today.

“The majority of the American people are very dissatisfied with the Iraq war now and would be happy to get out of it. But Americans are bred deep into their psyches to think of America as a good country and, I think, much harder than just the hurdle of getting troops out of Iraq is to get Americans to realise the terrible things we do in the name of the United States.”

And the list keeps getting longer and longer:

....American Casualties of Iraq and Afghanistan .... 1,475 battlefield casualties the Pentagon reports for the month of February. The new data, available here for Iraq and here for Afghanistan show 73,518 American servicemen and women have been killed, wounded, injured, or fallen seriously ill in the two wars. In addition, at least 263,909 veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan have gone to the VA for medical treatment and at least 245,034 have filed a disability claim.

And this is the treatment they get when they get home:

According to the VFA, the problem of military doctors refusing to back soldiers with mental health problems is widespread: "VFA's work across the country has confirmed that soldiers often need their doctors to be stronger advocates for improved treatment by their commanders and comrades. For instance, soldiers need doctors who are willing to push back against commanders who doubt the legitimacy of combat-related mental health injuries."

While talking to soldiers at Fort Drum, VFA also discovered "considerable stigma against mental health treatment within the military and pressure within some units to deny mental health problems as a result of combat.

Some soldiers who had been in the military for more than a decade stated that they lied on mental health questionnaires for fear that if they disclosed problems, it would reduce their likelihood of being promoted."

Soldiers at Fort Drum are not alone. In an earlier report titled "Trends in Treatment of America's Wounded Warriors" VFA disclosed that leaders of the military mental health treatment system have been warning Department of Defense leadership of the magnitude of the mental health crisis that is brewing.

A report by the Army's Mental Health Advisory Team (MHAT) that was released last May found that the percentage of soldiers suffering "severe stress, emotional, alcohol or family problem[s]" had risen more than 85 percent since the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom. MHAT also found that 28 percent of soldiers who had experienced high-intensity combat were screening positive for acute stress (i.e., Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, PTSD).

Finally, MHAT disclosed that soldiers who had been deployed more than once were 60 percent more likely to screen positive for acute stress (i.e., PTSD) when compared to soldiers on their first deployment.

Using them up and throwing them out not by incompetence, but by design.