Fourth of July Meditation on Independence

Now that women can in some cases serve in combat roles, the considerations are somewhat changed, but until and unless we have another military draft, we will not again have generations of people who, like the men who served in World War II and through the years until the draft ended in 1973, were considered -- without it being so baldly stated -- expendable. If I try to put myself in the position of a man whose age made him eligible for the draft during that time or who wanted to enlist anyway, I wonder how it would make me feel about women, who grew up without the expectation, never mind the requirement, that they could serve in combat and die at a very young age. What a strange combination of expectation, demand, and for some, what would be considered great privilege to be connected with men but not with women.

Then think about the candid statement many veterans have made about the intense fear of even knowing you could be drafted, not to mention actually being in combat, since courage in battle does not mean becoming unafraid, and terror is a common and nearly universal feeling when one is at war. Those feeling terror are expected not to mind or at least somehow to manage to survive unscathed by the terror caused by knowing they could die at any moment. They are too often expected to zoom past the devastating grief of losing beloved comrades in battle ... or losing their own innocence about the evil that humans can inflict on each other. Are these not intolerable burdens to place on anyone? And how shocking and unconscionable it is that we rush to call those who are not unscathed "mentally ill" rather than deeply human.

Whatever we feel about war in general or about a particular war, this is a plea to declare today our independence as a nation from those who would pathologize -- and distance themselves from -- those who have suffered in war, be they men or women, be their suffering due to combat or to having been sexually assaulted or victimized in other ways.

*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-372v-i1MM shows a bit of the ceremony
**http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/02/11/remarks-president-obama-and-president-hollande-france-arrival-ceremony has the full text of the addresses by both President Obama and President Hollande
***whenjohnnyandjanecomemarching.weebly.com, and Facebook page "When Johnny and Jane Come Marching Home"
****http://www.kathleenbarry.net/books.htm