On this Veteran's Day, Minnesota Public Radio broadcast the story of Col. Jack Tueller's experience in World War II (Dick Gordon's The Story). Now in his 90s, Col. Tueller--who as a child took up the trumpet to salve his soul after being abandoned by his father--spoke movingly of the power of music to charm an enemy sniper into surrender, or to ease his wife--who suffers from dementia--into moments of relative lucidity.
Also today, the bishop of Minnesota called upon us to give thanks in prayer for those in the military who have made sacrifices for the greater good, and for their families. It is a good and worthy prayer; but it leaves out some categories of people who are also part of the greater landscape of war.
I know that veterans need all the prayer we can offer, and more: they require our strident advocacy. The Veterans Administration has only this year changed its standards for acknowledging combat-related post-traumatic stress disorder for troops in combat zones (rather than requiring PTSD sufferers to "prove" that a particular incident in combat caused the disorder); in part, some might like to believe, because a more sympathetic president occupies the Oval Office, but much more obviously because thousands of veterans' family members cried out for it.
But somehow a straightforward request to give thanks to God for members of the military gives me pause.
It isn't that I hold any brief against men and women in uniform. I think of a brave, endearing young man who came to me when I was serving as priest-chaplain on a university campus. He had interrupted his college and career plans to serve in Iraq and though he longed to “get on with life,” he spoke with the unswerving, clear loyalty that marks the best of military professionalism of his willingness to return if needed. But he was facing the prospect of being called up to Afghanistan, to a war he regarded as senseless and immoral. It quickly became clear that as far as he was concerned, “honoring our veterans” had no relation at all to a blanket endorsement of the nation’s military adventures.
It is nonetheless the overwhelming cultural tide in our society to bathe national war efforts in the purity of veterans’ “sacrifice.” To question warmaking is tantamount to dishonoring the dead. That is a peculiarly convenient rhetorical ploy, of course, since it is impossible to poll the deceased to ask them whether they would prefer us to honor them by perpetuating the wars that cost them their lives. Long before he was a U.S. Senator, Vietnam veteran John Kerry testified before Congress in 1971 that it was hard to ask a soldier to be “the last man to die for a mistake.” We have long since pressed beyond his moral scruple: our pundits invoke the dead to insist that war–any war–must be continued at all cost.
There was a time–for those in the military, it does not seem so long ago–when donning a military uniform was genuinely a matter of service, even sacrifice, to a greater good, a brighter future. That was a time when “just war” was a meaningful category; when soldiers could think they were fighting to defend the powerless. But the inevitable logic of military occupation is that the powerless become the intractable dull mass of civilians who refuse to yield up their hearts and minds in gratitude; eventually, they become the enemy. However the pundits may resist it, the logic is clear enough to many veterans.
The cultural tide–and its undertow now reaches into the churches–favors an unconditional adulation of veterans. The hard-headed analysis required of a conscientious citizenry would ask: What are the true goals of the latest invasion and occupation? What purposes are evidently served? How do the purported objects of our solicitude--acutely vulnerable men, women, and children--actually fare after years of warfare? –Those that survive, that is, in refugee camps or curfewed cities? But such analysis is washed away in the crashing surf of “honoring the sacrifice” of our military personnel as if they alone, uniquely, supremely merited our concern.
There is a relentless horde of flag-waving flacks, pundits, and politicos eager to require of us our silent assent in the war effort, for the wars du jour and the next war, and the next. If we protest, we are told we disrespect the dead; but have not the valiant died for something other than continual war? Cold-blooded “national security” hacks speak readily enough of endless war, but what soldier wants that, prays for that, gives his or her life for that?
And what Christian may give blanket assent to prayers that stop with thanksgiving for those in uniform? Do not these courageous men and women themselves ask us for more? If we fall silent without naming the suffering of the innocent, the courage of the dissenter, are we not limiting our imagination to the militarist vision of endless war for causes that must remain unspoken, unseen, unthought? But are we not commanded to lift our eyes to a broader horizon, a future free of war?
Another prayer comes to mind. It was included in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer in the years following Vietnam, and it follows the prayer For Those in the Armed Forces of our Country (p. 823). It reads:
O God our Father, whose Son forgave his enemies while he was suffering shame and death: Strengthen those who suffer for the sake of conscience; when they are accused, save them from speaking in hate; when they are rejected, save them from bitterness; when they are imprisoned, save them from despair; and to us your servants, give grace to respect their witness and to discern the truth, that our society may be cleansed and strengthened. This we ask for the sake of Jesus Christ, our merciful and righteous Judge. Amen.
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