This week, The Denver Post has run a front-page series profiling soldiers returning from Iraq. Their stories were sad and powerful, and they illustrate the varied backgrounds and experiences of our troops.
The series puts a human face on the suffering caused by the war and reveals just how small a stake most of us have in the Iraqi conflict. We’re not being asked to pay a special war tax. We don’t have to ration anything. We’re not seeing our brothers, sons, fathers and uncles drafted into the service. And most of us don’t have a loved one in Iraq or Afghanistan.
While the war rages on the other side of the globe, we simply live our uninterrupted lives.
The soldiers featured in the series have spent months or years in an environment in which they were faced with death and dismemberment every day. They’ve seen horrible, grotesque injuries. They’ve heard the agonizing screams of people whose limbs have been blown off. They’ve witnessed the utter despair of people who have lost someone they loved. They’ve lived in a state of constant terror, not knowing when they might walk into the crosshairs of a sniper’s rifle, roll over a bomb or get swarmed by insurgents.
And their families have experienced the war with them. They’ve lain awake at night wondering if their loved one would live or die. They’ve struggled to pay the bills alone. They’ve tried to maintain the emotional equilibrium of their families. They’ve experienced the effects of the war every day while their neighbors have carried on as if nothing were happening.
When the troops come home, many of them say they are shocked by how little concern the public has for the war and the soldiers fighting it.
“People were so oblivious, they didn’t even care,” Spec. Elizabeth Spradlin said of her return to Colorado Springs. “They didn’t even talk about the war.”
Despite our rhetoric about supporting the troops, our actions suggest a deep indifference. Maybe that’s because the war doesn’t cost us anything or provide any entertainment for us. We care about the NFL playoffs, because we have money riding on the games, or because we’re passionate about our Broncos. But the hundreds of billions of dollars being spent in Iraq is borrowed money that’s not coming directly out of our pockets, and the troops are mostly people who we don’t know.
Two years ago, I wrote a column in which I referred to U.S. soldiers as “slaves.” The column was not well received. Most people believed that I was denigrating the troops. My point was that our perception of the average soldier is off the mark. We think of these men and women as volunteers who signed up for military service and are therefore willing to fight. As long as we believe that, we won’t worry much about the impact the war is having on them and their families.
As long as we think of them as volunteers, we won’t demand answers about the necessity of the war, we won’t agitate for an exit strategy, we won’t push for a reduction in troops and we won’t marshal more help for their struggling families. When you believe that a person volunteered for a difficult job, then you’ll respect him and express your amazement at his commitment, but you won’t necessarily feel the urge to rescue him.
But if we actually see our soldiers for what they are – mostly young people who signed up because they wanted to travel and/or get an education – then we’ll realize that most of them are being held in Iraq against their will. They can’t escape until we pay attention, recognize their plight, and do whatever it takes to bring them home.
Former Bronco Reggie Rivers (reggierivers2002@yahoo.com) is the host of “Global Agenda” Wednesdays at 9:30 p.m. on KBDI-Channel 12. His column appears every Friday.
