Thank You Vets

The true cost of war is what vets bring back with them. The money and diplomatic capital are comparatively light. We will all have to bear them, but not in a way that fundamentally changes how we experience life. But the burden vets carry changes them for the rest of their lives.

War should be all of our burden. But we as a society have been ineffective at helping our soldiers when they come home. I say I support the troops, but I can't honestly say I have adequately tried to share their burden. This realization came to me recently while watching a PBS documentary called Reserved to Fight. It follows several vets from one of the first companies to fight and return from Iraq.

If any of you vets have had similar experiences, or different ones, I would like to hear about them.

Whether someone agrees with the Iraq War doesn't matter. We all have opinions, but that doesn't mean we live with the reality of war. Vets do every day.

They've spent months or years in life or death struggle. They've had to reconcile killing other human beings. The reasons the war was started don't tell us why they fight. They've fought regardless of their political views because the most important things to them are the people they love at home and the friends fighting next to them. For most of them, I believe their motivation is to make the world a better place.

Then they come back to the land they fought for. There might be a parade at their homecoming, and after that it's back to living a “normal” life. But normal seems pointless. No one wants to talk about the war except on a political level. The America these soldiers have idealized now seems petty compared to what they used to worry about. Many of them long for battle because at least there they felt like they belonged.

PTSD afflicts many of our vets and they may not even know it. They might see corpses when they close their eyes, so they can't sleep. They tend to be nervous in large groups of people, so they withdraw. They often have trouble maintaining relationships. And they don't know how to talk about what they are going through. Many self medicate with drugs and alcohol. Many marriages fail. Many end up on the street or in jail.

I believe our soldiers, overwhelmingly, are honorable men and women who have sacrificed more than I can imagine, believing it was for something worth dying for. Many of those who didn't die will never completely leave that hell behind. I haven't yet figured out how to help ease the burden you carry. So, for now I will just say thank you.