I'm not saying that there are no stamps whatsoever related to those wars. In 1985, for instance, 32 years after the signing of an armistice not-quite-ever-ending the Korean War, a stamp in honor of its veterans was issued and, in 2003, another for the Korean War Veterans Memorial in Washington. Several stamps have similarly highlighted Vietnam veterans and Maya Lin's iconic memorial to them.
But stamps that told us what either of those wars were for or that sought to mobilize Americans in any way? Not a chance. Ditto when it comes to this century's wars in Afghanistan and Iraq or to the larger never-ending war on terror. Yes, a 2002 "Heroes USA" stamp featured firefighters raising the flag at the World Trade Center and was meant to provide money for injured first responders; and yes, there's currently a "Healing PTSD" stamp for sale that raises money for veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. But as for stamps celebrating decisive victories in Kabul or Baghdad or Tripoli, you know the answer to that one as well as I do; nor, of course, were there any reminding us of the freedoms we were supposedly fighting to uphold in those wars.
In that context, let's return to that FDR Four Freedoms stamp, which was very popular during World War II. Its message couldn't have been more succinct. It read: "Freedom of speech and religion, from want and fear." Of course, World War II was an atrocious war, as all wars are. But what (partially) redeemed it were its ideals, however imperfectly realized in the post-war world.
Still, when's the last time the U.S. Postal Service issued a stamp that so perfectly summed up "why we fight"? There are no such stamps today because our present wars have no higher purpose. It's that simple.
We're not supposed to notice that, since we're not supposed to notice those wars to begin with, not in any visceral way at least. Even stamps like the recent PTSD one (with a 10-cent surcharge that goes to veterans) are an artful dodge. Should we really feel any better donating a few nickels or dimes to help veterans with their physical and mental struggles from wars made more horrendous because they were (and remain) so unnecessary?
Or thought of another way, why is the post office raising money for veterans' health care? Perhaps because a staggering (and still rising) Pentagon budget only ensures that there will be more war -- with more wounded veterans.
Looking Back, Yet Again, to World War II
I never miss the opening ceremonies to the Super Bowl. As an exercise in pure Americana, they have no equal. This year's included the usual trappings: a military color guard, an oversized flag, and a flyover by combat jets, including the new F-35 stealth fighter, a trillion-dollar boondoggle of the military-industrial complex. Since 2020 marked the 100th anniversary of the National Football League as well as the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II, the opening ceremony featured centenarian veterans of that war helping with the pre-game coin toss. It was heartwarming to see those redoubtable vets and recognize their service.
But I can tell when my emotions are being manipulated. Watching them, I knew I was supposed to get warm and fuzzy about military service and maybe feel better about the NFL as well. Yet my respect for them and "the good war" they fought (to use Studs Terkel's ironic title for his oral history of World War II) didn't stop me from wanting to shower hot wrath on the leaders who have lied us into so many bad wars since then.
Speaking of warm fuzzies, consider the long opening commercial for the NFL that kicked off this year's ceremonies. It featured an African-American boy running with a football, dodging various obstacles on a transcontinental journey to the Super Bowl, during which he pauses, reverentially, before a statue of Pat Tillman, the safety for the Arizona Cardinals who famously gave up a multimillion-dollar contract to enlist in the Army after 9/11. Tragically, he was killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan, a fact the U.S. military attempted to cover up in a conspiracy that went as high as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Even though it was just a commercial, it was right for that young boy to honor Tillman's memory. But to what end? To make the NFL look patriotic or perhaps to overcome any lingering taint from principled (yet widely misunderstood) take-a-knee protests by players like Colin Kaepernick?
An honest accounting of America's recent wars by the NFL might reflect on the fact that no other players have ever joined Tillman in giving up millions to enlist in the war effort. In fact, no players from any major league sport, whether baseball, basketball, or hockey, have done so. Not even NASCAR drivers, supposedly the salt of the earth, have, as far as I know, exchanged race cars for Humvees. Why should they? America's recent wars might as well not exist for them -- and, to be honest, for most of us as well.
I'm not calling for major sports stars to be drafted into the military as they were in World War II (though many athletes of that era volunteered first). What I'm suggesting is that, some 18-plus years later, they -- like the rest of us -- should begin paying real attention to America's wars and what they're about. Because that's the only way, as a nation, we'll ever come together and put a stop to them.
The answer to our collective apathy is not that war must become bloody awful here in the "homeland" before we finally do something to end it. Instead, it's to listen to those who have seen the awfulness of war and the atrocious behaviors it enables and rewards.
Consider the words of E.B. Sledge, a Marine who fought at Peleliu and Okinawa in World War II's Pacific island campaign against the Japanese. Nightmares haunted him for 25 years after the brutal fighting on those islands ended. He described the war he experienced as an exercise in sheer terror with grown men screaming in agony and sobbing in pain, with fighting so sustained that soldiers moved about like zombies, having been in the line of fire for days on end. Exhaustion bred murderous mistakes that too often were dismissed with a mind-numbing euphemism I've already succumbed to in this piece: "friendly fire." And that, mind you, was "the good war."
So, while saluting those photogenic centenarian vets featured by the NFL, we should also remember those who didn't come home and those who came home with radically altered lives. Sledge, for instance, recalled a buddy of his, Jim Day, who dreamed of running a horse ranch in California after the war. But as Sledge recounted in a talk in 1994, "At Peleliu, a Japanese machine gun shattered one of Jim's legs." All that was left was a stump with blood spurting out of it.
"Later, when Jim came to the First Marine Division reunions (maybe some of you can't conceive of this), we would have to help him go to the bathroom. His wife had to do that at home. The poor man couldn't handle it by himself, because of that stump of a leg cut off at the hip. He died a premature death after years of pain and back trouble."
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