Military Families Patient No More

How often have you heard the concerns by police departments regarding an unacceptable level of fatalities, met with “these are not draftees, these are full-time professional police?” It would be insulting would it not?

Would we ever send a police officer into service without all the equipment and resources needed the job?

Would we ever push our police back to work before they had fully healed from any injuries they incurred in the line of duty?

So given that our police and military are both volunteers, why the difference in the way we treat them? As a military wife and mom when I hear the difference expressed by so many, it feels like is our nation is essentially telling us to suck it up and stop complaining.

While as military families, we understand that we may pay the ultimate price for our loved ones service, it does not even begin to lesson our pain and loss when you tell us that the cause is noble and just. Pain is pain. But when we try to express our feelings, only to have them dismissed as a part of the bargain, what it feels like is that what our fellow Americans really mean when they say they “support the troops” is “we support you and all but we really are not interested in the details please. Let’s just keep it abstract.”

Give our loved the same consideration you would your police.  And on a real personal note, our daughter, deploying to Iraq after Christmas, while I support her decision to go, don’t ask me not to be angry to my core if she is killed or wounded because of inadequate equipment or training?

How hard do you think it was to tell my Marine, the love of my life that even though I hate the Iraq war, it was his career and therefore his decision to volunteer to deploy, but that I would support his decision unconditionally?  I support our military, not the reasons for the wars. And you can bet your life that I will do everything within my power, to demand that our government do right by each and every one of our veterans and their families for as long as it takes.

I wish I could believe this whole exercise in Iraq was completely justified, at least then if the worst happens, I could believe that the loss of one of my loved ones might actually accomplish something. Sincerely I hope I am proven wrong, for it to be otherwise is such an unbelievably painful place to be.

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