Veteran's Day Prayer

This is an excerpt from my blog posting and a column published in the Sky Hi News in May 2015,  My prayer is relevant today as we face a potential devastating nuclear war in Korea. The text of the poem that inspired the day of remembrance, In Flander's Fields: http://www.greatwar.co.uk/poems/john-mccrae-in-flanders-fields.htm

Veterans Day names and celebrations differ from country to country. Originally called Armistice Day, it is to celebrate on the day the combatants signed the end World War I. Most countries (except France and Belgium) the holiday name.  The United Kingdom and Canada in 1931 adopted the name  Remembrance Day, while the United States chose All Veterans Day (later shortened to 'Veterans Day')  in 1938 and later extended it to  honor military veterans of all conflicts. When I was a child in Oklahoma in the 1950s we still referred to it as Armistice Day. I remember wearing a crepe paper poppy on that day to remind us of the end of World War I and those that died in it.

 I have often found myself on British Commonwealth territory in November. Artificial poppies, red with a distinctive black middle, are worn in remembrance of the fallen in the poppy covered Flanders Fields in Belgium inspired by a poem by John McCrae. Poppies are sold as fund raisers to provide charity to veterans of all wars. I always bought a poppy to remind me that our close allies in the British Commonwealth suffered even more than us in World War I.

In remembering my relatives and ancestors who fought on our behalf, I do have a special prayer. It contains thanks for their service but I also pray that the leaders who will send them to battle in the future have the wisdom to avoid putting them in harms way in vain and first seek other options to settle conflicts. War should only be a defensive action against an attack on us and our allies. To launch wars as a preemptive strike should never be in our country’s traditions.

A version of this appeared in the Sky Hi Daily News Friday May 22, 2015

A fellow Rotarian asked if I had ever heard this version of Waltzing Matilda which became a war protest song in the 70's.  I thought I had heard most of the folk songs of that era, but this one I had not, or if I did, I forgot it.  On Poppy Day, as I called veteran's day, and also celebrated it in UK territories, I thought this was a reminder of the horrors of war, not only horrible to those who died, but the horrors of  the wounded warriors who returned home.  Thank goodness we no longer practice trench warfare, and modern medicine saves so many who otherwise would have been corpses, the return of them home is equally devastating, new protheses technology not withstanding, and especially those with PTSD. 

http://www.greatwar.co.uk/poems/john-mccrae-in-flanders-fields.htm

Observing Veterans Day with more prospects of wounded warriors

Observance of Veterans Day November 11 should serve as a reminder that there is a human cost to combat. On Memorial Day last May, we honored those who died. On Veterans Day we honor those who came home, including the wounded. There are those who advocate more robust military combat to stop our current threat, ISIS. Are we, the American public, ready to add another war to the list of those generating veterans and seeing  the heartbreaking  images again on TV  of wounded warriors returning home?

The US finds our forces again in Iraq, continuing in Afghanistan, and now making raids into Syria, albeit in a reduced numbers and very limited combat roles. Reality has begun to set in: more US dead and wounded can be expected.

That the American public is “war weary” is a given. Almost no politician on the left and right is advocating an Iraq style invasion and occupation. No wonder. Over six thousand US troops have returned in body bags and caskets since 2003. But the numbers who died are only a small part of the total casualties, thanks to modern battle field medicine saving lives that would in the past have been lost. Those wounded in Afghanistan and Iraq total over 18,000. Some estimate a million. What we have to show for it is war without end, the rise of ISIS and resurgence of the Taliban and post conflict governments that have failed to stop either.

A political firestorm erupted with the announcement that the Obama administration is sending fifty more special forces have been added to the estimated 3500 US troops in northern Iraq and the 10000 forces in Afghanistan.  Politicians are quick to opine whether there are too many or too few or they are jeering at broken promises and blaming premature withdrawal or parsing the definition of boots on the ground and combat, while providing no alternatives that have not failed in the past.

The only hope to limit mission creep is to bring an end to the conflicts that threaten our own security before there is no other Iraq style alternative left. Richard Haas, President of the Council on Foreign Relations on recent Morning Joe (November 2)and Fareed Zakaria’s CNN GPS (November 1)  advocates realistic goals regarding Syria and Iraq, understanding that we neither have allies within Syria we can train nor the will for extensive combat ourselves to defeat ISIS there or to overthrow Assad.  Instead, we need to buy time to get Sunni tribes and Kurds in northern Iraq strong enough to stop the advance of ISIS and to reach a realization among combatants that further violence is futile. At that point a political solution of dividing Syria into ethnic enclaves might work. His approach appears to be the administration strategy.

 The hope is that while every combatant group that has its own agenda, many of Syria’s neighbors also fear an ISIS/Al Qaeda dominated Sunni control of the region. We should be applauding the US diplomatic initiative to seek a political solution in Syria, including Secretary of State John Kerry’s negotiations that involve Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Kurds and the sending of more US special ops to help what effective allies we have.

For more, see prior  posts of 10/19/15, Why military intervention does not work;  6/14/15, Time to Dust Off Joe Biden’s plan?; 5/9/15, Musings on differences between Memorial Day and Veteran’s Day

A version of this was published in the www.skyhidailynews.com  November 5, 6 ,2015

Fareed Zakaria brings a different view  and makes the parallel between the Obama policy and US mission creep in Viet Nam.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-dangers-of-incrementalism/2015/11/05/22aad1de-83f9-11e5-9afb-0c971f713d0c_story.html

http://journalistsresource.org/studies/government/security-military/us-military-casualty-statistics-costs-war-iraq-afghanistan-post-911

http://www.forbes.com/sites/rebeccaruiz/2013/11/04/report-a-million-veterans-injured-in-iraq-afghanistan-wars/