On this Memorial Day weekend, visiting my parents, one thing I thought my Dad might like would be to go to the parade. So, we took a drive up to the town common, walked over to a bench, and Dad greeted a woman his age whom he knows, pulled up his side of the bench, and settled down to watch the ceremonies. They compared notes on joints that ached and on how long it had been since they'd seen each other.
The local vets set the memorial agenda and interspersed anthems, speeches, and multiple flag ceremonies, as kids from the community sang and dropped roses onto the helmeted rifles of the World Wars, Korea, and Vietnam. I didn’t see an Iraq-era helmet. Maybe my hometown hasn’t lost a soldier there yet. I was surprised by a few things. The crowd was a lot smaller than I remembered it being in my childhood and the number of vets who marched behind the high school band numbered only about a dozen, followed by a few Boy Scouts and the Massachusetts State Troopers who formed the honor guard. The occasion wasn't the shared community experience it had been to us as kids; it was now more of a meeting of military families and local pols.
Being there yesterday made me think about how isolated the military families of today are probably feeling, bearing the brunt of the war without the country as a whole knowing their pain and loneliness, their worry, and the long stints apart. Since we’ve all been told that the war can be waged without a draft, without special taxes to pay for the war, and that the enlistees and National Guard members who do all the fighting and dying can continue to have their tours extended endlessly, there’s not much that most of us know of the life of military families.
The commitment made by a country and the price a nation pays for that commitment ought to be shared at large. The soldiers who are deployed overseas too often feel that their experience is not only not shared by us, but not cared about by Americans, the people for whom they serve.
Whether one opposes the continued occupation of Iraq or supports it, we owe it to the soldiers who carry out our nation’s policies and to their families to be involved in their struggle, in our struggle as a nation. They carry out their mission and their families support them. Our respect for what they give ought to extend at least as far as an active involvement in their fate and ours. When a country loses sight of what happens to our defenders, we risk more than their lives. We risk our future and our security.