Posted: Wednesday, 09 September 2009 10:42AM
Nothing To Be Proud Of
Steve Corbett Reporting
Wednesday, September 09, 2009
Four American soldiers died in Afghanistan yesterday, the same day that I tried to convince you that our war there is a bad idea. Four American soldiers died yesterday in Iraq as well. I mentioned Iraq on the air yesterday, too.
Few of you wanted to talk about our two wars. You have other matters on your mind.
Unless you are touched directly by the war, it’s a good chance that you avoid the discussion. Even if you care, and some of you do, you have other matters on your mind.
I want you to include our wars among your priorities. Make it part of your “things to do today” list.
I haven’t yet attended a war funeral in Northeastern Pennsylvania.
We’ve lost people, of course, but my three funerals occurred in California when I lived there from 2002 through 2006. I wrote a lot about those three dead young men. I learned a lot from their families.
I don’t want to write about your losses. I don’t want to stand with my head bowed by the grave of your son, daughter, husband, wife, sister, brother, father or mother as grieving family members flinch when the rifle salute breaks the morning air and all peace is lost.
But unless we truly finish up in Iraq and refuse to go deeper into Afghanistan, I know I’ll wind up one day at a funeral mass in Wilkes-Barre or Scranton or in one of the many little towns in between.
Although I don’t expect our wars to end any time soon, I do expect you to do something to end them.
Still, we don’t talk much about our wars on “Corbett.” I try to engage you in discussion because I need to remind you - as my caller Paul always does - that we still have good people in bad places. Paul is a combat veteran who served in Iraq. He says he’s doing better now that he’s home and beginning to adjust. I pulling for Paul and I’ll do anything I can to help ease the transition for him and his comrades.
I’ll do anything I can to make sure our troops stay safe at war.
But I won’t support the effort to expand our wars. Endorsing Barack Obama’s war in Afghanistan is not smart or patriotic. Instead, demanding that he and his loyalists review history is a way to save American lives. That’s patriotic.
I’m worried about the people of Afghanistan as well. They don’t need us telling them what to do with their government or how to live their lives.
Would you approve of a foreign nation occupying Northeastern Pennsylvania and telling us what to do? Of course you wouldn’t. Like the Taliban in Afghanistan, many of you would take up arms and do your damndest to kill any foreign invader.
By answering the call, you would consider yourself to be a freedom fighter. And if you died in the process, you would expect your children to take up where you left off.
That’s exactly what’s happening in Afghanistan.
The people of Afghanistan have the right to decide their own destiny, however bad it might be. They have the right to be as good or as bad as they can be. That’s the best lesson the United States can offer. The people of Afghanistan have the right to make or break their own nation.
Just like us.
The people of the United States are in trouble. We are failing to get better and stronger as a land of liberty and justice for all. We are losing respect in the world. And many of us simply don’t seem to care.
Veterans of our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan come home in relative silence. They arrive and disappear. It’s almost as if they never left. America has used them and released them – until next time, when they’re needed again.
Soldiers are serving two and three and sometimes four combat tours.
Maybe we trivialize military service because most of us have no obvious stake in the wars. Maybe we avoid the discussion because we lack a draft like the one that sent tens of thousands of our young people to early graves after their tours of Vietnam.
Maybe we’re just becoming callous – treating our wars like an old video game that involves imaginary warriors who explode and disappear from the screen. Whatever it is that causes us to shirk our civic responsibility is nothing to be proud of.
And I don’t really know how to stop our malaise or our wars.
So I’ll keep talking about it. I’ll keep asking you to do the same. And I’ll also ask combat veterans to stand against the war that sent them into harm’s way on no clear mission and for no clear purpose.
I don’t want to see you at the cemetery.
But I have a real bad feeling that I will.
Sad to say, Obama’s war might one day finally bring us together.
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