ON CONFLICTS
I'm conflicted: I'm a pacifist, pledged to nonviolence and, so, I'm against capital punishment and for gun control. We have two guns in our house and will shoot you dead if you are here with ill purpose; I'm a criminal defense lawyer - you know, the ones that say that no crime is so horrible that you don't deserve due process - but if you hurt my children the system needs to protect you from me; I'm also a card-carrying liberal who wants to gut the military and rein in all of our adventures, but I'm a veteran, having spent four years as a cheerleader and willing participant of what was at that time the worst case of American military folly; and, I understand that the country is a metaphor for home.
But metaphors leave room for interpretation, if we see their implications at all. So we spend our time debating these things as if they're rules set out in a primer (what lawyers call "Hornbook law"). I suspect responsible folks struggle with these inner demons. On Memorial Day, though, more than any other holiday - including, even the Fourth - we put aside our national emotional double-binds and think about the dead, now no longer liberal or conservative. We personalize it if we have that misfortune or we think in general and grandiose terms about their "ultimate sacrifice." And on this day we are really whole. Tomorrow, though, we'll back debating issues along political lines, about the costs, efficacy, justice and necessity of programs and benefits for veterans.
War's accounting is often based on absolute metrics like deaths, injuries and expenditures and these debates will center on those. Recriminations will ensue. Yesterday, I posted two things on my facebook page about family and friends who were affected by these other costs: One of my dearest friends, cut down by cancer, most probably attributable to Agent Orange. My cousin who was MIA for many years, his body's recovery too late to give his grieving parents closure. (Look at the story about the recovery and his family's reunion at http:\\www.maddenandsoto.com\noel.htm) Somewhere in my possessions are two depositions that I took of two veterans from Chickasaw. They were suffering from cancer too. We were fighting to convince the VA that their sickness was attributable to their war service. They described how the Navy had detonated an atomic bomb under their vessel at Bikini Atoll. How they brushed their teeth and bathed in the water but the government was centered on the cost. So, too, was the struggle over Agent Orange about costs.
Wars have costs that are profound, even beyond the absurd accounting that makes mortality a standard unit of measurement. We are led into war not merely by political calculations and hubris but by inattention to these other costs and underpinnings. But today, while we're all one, make a pledge to truly honor the military, not just the dead. Surrender your ego. Tell your side - right or left - to STFU and listen, to compromise, to work at solutions. That these are real guys and gals running around without limbs, with snakes in their heads, or whatever, that they need their help, your help, our help.
