The War For The Best In Us

When it comes to the war in Iraq there is no question that the majority of those serving in the US armed forces are attempting to do their jobs honourably. But when placed in a situation in which confusion and contradiction often convolute even the most determined of minds, it’s not hard to understand why so many Iraq vets face significant problems adjusting to life after the war.

Many have served multiple tours, victims of stop-loss, and have become almost strangers to their families and friends who are often confronted with the shells of people they once knew. While certainly not the norm, some have committed crimes that can be attributed to the affects of post-traumatic stress disorder, such as domestic abuse, assault, and so forth. In most cases such actions are viewed as entirely contradictory to their personalities by those closest to them.

The war in Iraq, like that of Vietnam, is unique in that it possesses strong underlying currents of ambiguity that affect the common soldier’s sense of morality. Unlike those that served in the Second World War, the trauma’s faced by those returning from Iraq are bizarrely stronger, even though the amount of continual combat seen is nowhere near as comparable. Of course, one has to take into account that those returning from active duty overseas in Europe and Asia at the end of World War Two were members of an emotionally closed generation, one that viewed the expression of emotional distress as a character flaw. But one must also remember that theirs was a conflict that did not possess the same ambiguities as those faced by US soldiers in the Vietnam nor Iraq.

True, in all three cases soldiers returning to the US have found a nation untouched by the conflicts in which they’ve participated. But for those that returned during or at the end of World War Two the social understanding regarding the conflict was ever present. The entire nation had been mobilized to help fight the war, and the people of the United States were connected to it like no other war in the nation’s history since the Civil War. The same cannot be said of veterans that returned from Vietnam, who commonly found themselves back in familiar communities in which the reality of the war was an afterthought at best. Life had simply gone on without them, despite the fact that they had been sold a bill of goods that they were defending a way of life that showed no real indication of connection to what they had endured. The same is true of Iraq veterans.

The reason, of course, and thus the presence of moral ambiguity, is that both Vietnam and Iraq are wars based on reckless foreign policy agendas, not the true safeguarding of national security. Of course, there are those that will argue to the contrary, but the fact remains that both were engineered to help enact foreign policy agendas that were not based on the true defense of the nation’s security, but rather foreign interests. With regards to Vietnam the revelations provided by the Pentagon Papers reveal this. With regards to Iraq, the falsehoods employed by the current administration and its shameless willingness to prey upon the nation’s fears following 9/11 led to an invasion and subsequent occupation that has since required the Bush Administration to present the American people with ever changing justifications for US involvement when previous justifications have been rendered moot.

As a soldier, to be placed in such a situation, it must be difficult indeed to swallow the patriotic pill whole without some semblance of confusion accompanying it.

In the end, no matter the conflict or the reasoning behind it, every combat soldier comes to the same conclusion. You take care of your own, and together attempt to see each other through the chaos in which you have found yourself. Everything beyond that represents unnecessary convolution. Survival becomes the only focus, and whatever is required to maintain any semblance of psychological normality as it pertains to such a chaotic situation becomes the norm. To disregard that reality is to ultimately place those around you in danger. In the end, patriotism and ideology have little to do with it. Survival, both physically and mentally, are of far greater importance. That said, such a reality does not excuse immoral behaviour unleashed upon those that face the same reality. Generals move pieces around boards on both sides, but it is the average man that must ultimately enact their wishes – and in that there are no sides.

It is often said that war brings out the best and the worst in us. But the truth is that it only beings out the best of us in the worst possible of circumstances. Thus, any person labeled a war hero is merely an individual that has accomplished the extraordinary as it pertains to the worst possible of productions that our species knows. And that, while viewed as triumphant by many, must ultimately be placed into a terrible context, one that admits that there are accomplishments worth far more praise that are simply overlooked, or marginalized, because they lack the luster of war to make them seem heroic.

True heroism is the ability to survive that which represents the worst in us and to use that experience to live a life dedicated to ensuring that the best in us is promoted without the need for death to be involved to justify it.