Full disclosure. I come from a military family. My Father served in the U.S. Army during Korea. Thankfully for us, he didn’t have to go, he was trained as a communications specialist and was sent to the White House as part of President Eisenhower’s communications staff. He traveled everywhere with Ike, even to his vacation retreat. My father is gone now. But Dwight D. Eisenhower was a painter in his spare time. On my brothers living room wall hangs a framed oil painting of a winter scene at his vacation ranch. On my bedroom wall hangs Ike’s version of the iconic George Washington painting, with a small White House card, congratulating my father on his marriage to my mother, and personally signed by Ike and Mamie. The hardest moment of my life was sitting there, in Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery, under an enclosure, and accepting the flag that had draped my fathers casket, with the sincere appreciation from the second Lieutenant presiding for his service. My tears soaked into the fabric of the flag, and I almost collapsed when “taps” was played. This is what it really means to be a veteran.
Both of my uncles were army vets, my Uncle Gerald was killed on active service in a Jeep accident in Germany. My Grandfather was an army vet in the M.P. tho turned that experience into a career as a Chicago police officer. When I was 18, even though there was no longer an active draft I took the bulls by the horns. I signed up to serve in the U.S. Air Force. Unfortunately, my previous years of hockey had led to several knee operations, and I was medically deferred as not being physically fit to serve in active duty. But at least I tried. I wanted to follow in the family footsteps and wear the uniform, to serve, to be able to salute the flag.
Today, after holding my fathers cherry wood encased casket flag and crying, I decided to do something different. I fired up the X-Box 360 and plugged in “Medal of Honor, World at War” based on the WWII conflict. I wanted to experience, even in some small and vicarious way what these men and women went through. I got killed like 6 times in the initial mission on Malkin Atoll,. usually from a goddamn grenade. I had to turn off the console when the impact hit me.
We are not the country that we used to be. For all of the bluff and bluster our politicians throw around about the strength and professionalism and dedication of our military, we are fucking separated from it! We have lost our moral compass when it comes to the brave men and women who serve and protect us. Rachel Maddow presents a brilliant diagnosis in her book “Drift”, which shows how our government physically separated us from the military, by disbanding Selective Service, and making the military a volunteer organization. How did they do that? By using the states National Guards, who didn’t sign up for all that combat shit, or they would have joined the Army or Marines to fill the gaps.
If I live that long, I’ll be 60 in February. I don’t even have to close my eyes to remember walking down the streets of Cicero, Illinois. You couldn’t walk two blocks without seeing the banners in the windows. The number of stars in the middle indicated the number of sons and daughters serving the country in active military service. A gold star was cause for weeping, it meant a son or daughter that would never come home again. Even if your family didn’t have anyone in the military, your friends or neighbors did. Almost EVERYbody had skin in the game. Not anymore. You can talk to 100 or more people without coming across anyone who has a loved one in the military. And when there’s no longer skin in the game, nobody really cares.
As a nation we are seriously fucked up. Our kids are growing up, playing Medal of Honor, and Call of Duty, loving how glamorous it is to blow away enemies, especially in an interactive mode, without ever stopping to think that in real life, there is no reset button. There is no “start from last checkpoint”. You want proof of that? Go drive out to any national cemetery in your area and look at the acres and acres of marble monuments. Those brave men and women didn’t have a second chance, there was no reset button.
My personal opinion? Bring back the draft. Get everybody’s skin in the game. Put something at risk for the majority of Americans. Maybe then out government wouldn’t be so goddamn quick to pull the trigger on foreign intervention if massive numbers of their constituents had something to lose in the great roulette spin.
Thanks as always for reading.