By Robert H. Scales
Memorial Day was cast as a time for remembering the past exploits of our war heroes. But America's attention span is notoriously short, particularly when the subject is something as unpleasant as war. I returned from Vietnam over 40 years ago to a nation tired of images of soldiers suffering and dying in that war. My only concern at the time was to exchange my jungle fatigues for civvies at San Francisco International. My presence was not resented by passengers around me so much as ignored. Fast forward and the nation's attentions today are shifting away from images of Iraq and Afghanistan to foreclosures, financial meltdown, oil spills and the latest about badly behaving politicians and movie stars. We still see soldiers dressed in desert camouflage moving through airports, but concerned with our own dismal fortunes, they seem lately to become increasingly transparent.
Unlike my generation, transparency today doesn't mean any diminution in the regard America has for those it sends to war. The latest polls show that the military has the highest approval rating among all professions. Part of the difference between my generation and today is that in Vietnam, many of those who served and died were drafted and went to war as unwilling pawns in the great game. So we hold those who do the fighting in such high regard in part out of guilt that they are placeholders, surrogates if you will, for sons and daughters who will never know the sense of foreboding that comes from having a low draft number. But over the long term we may pay a price for the transparency we now give to the sacrifices of our placeholders. Growing transparency inevitably leads to a sense of separation between the people and those who serve them. The heavy lifting in Iraq and Afghanistan is being done by a very small and increasingly isolated minority. We find that military service is fast becoming a family business. At least 100 sons and daughters of general officers are in harm's way as we speak. The level of relative sacrifice is far greater today than it was in my generation. It's not unusual to find a soldier or Marine who is now in double-digit deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. Perhaps we don't sense the difference between their lives and ours, but increasingly they do. We don't hear much from them publicly because, unlike my generation of draftees, they are professionals and tend to keep their own counsel. But resentment is there, just under the surface. Unlike my generation, soldiers are plugged into the outside world through the Internet. You can often find a young soldier in the remotest and most inhospitable place blogging and tweeting and watching his countrymen with a wry cynicism.
Soldiers often ask why the media gave them so much attention before the surge when things were going badly in Iraq and so little attention now when things are going well. They wonder how so many political and media pundits know so much about a soldier's business, and yet lately, soldiers see so few of them near their foxholes. The Internet is a two-edged sword. In Vietnam, we only heard from home infrequently, by letter. Today a soldier is likely to go off on patrol after getting an earful about his loved one's problems with bill collectors, teachers or, increasingly, family counselors. Memorial Day should be about memories, to be sure. But it should also be about remembrances of those who are serving us so selflessly now. We must never allow this precious and tiny piece of Sparta to become permanently detached from America's Babylon. Next time you're in an airport, spend a second to shake a soldier's hand. Commit to rekindling that sense of good will toward our men and women in uniform you felt just after 9/11. The war for us is now background noise. But believe me, war is very real and increasingly dangerous for those whom we charge to fight it.
Thanks to all the vets, including both my parents who fought together in WWII. We are at war right now, and as much as we may try to forget about it, it is horribly real.