E.J. Montini and Supporting our Soldiers

E.J. Montini writes today about "Our failure to deploy support for troops. He got a call from a woman who was concerned about the lack of support for a bill that would limit the amount of time between deployments of military personnel. Seems the woman wants a little "home time" for her husband. Unfortunately, a load of Republicans voted against Senator Webb's bill because "it would interfere with the work of the military commanders."

I have friends who have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan multiple times and the toll on their families is tremendous. I'm sure there thousands of marriages and long-term relationships have been destroyed by these deployments, but hey, “they did volunteer.”

Yeah, but they didn't volunteer for this. Many joined the Guard or Reserves long before 9/11 and before the run-up to the war. They did it to bring some extra money into the household or help pay for college (you know, "Be all you can be?"). They didn’t sign up to end their marriage, come home disabled, or worse, dead.

The woman is right; we don't spend enough time thinking about the actual burden on the soldiers. But how are we expected to care about them when we're not allowed to see their funerals or their flag-draped coffins? But it's not about the men and women in uniform. It's about rationalization. These military commanders are given their orders by politicians who wouldn't recognize a plan for success if it bit them. We're so caught up with winning we're unable to see what we're losing: military families, husbands, wives, fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters.

Iraq is a C.F. and there are few in the military that have been over there that would tell you otherwise privately. Most of them don’t say anything for the same reason this woman’s husband won’t: he doesn’t want to sound like he’s complaining. But this, too, is part of the problem: don’t say what you think because those with narrow views or small minds will loudly paint you into a corner as being non-supportive. Sorry, if Bush had a clue or a plan, we wouldn’t be having this discussion in the first place.