Toy Soldiers

Yesterday I wrote my one-hundredth post on this blog.  I started in August with the idea of using it to learn about military children and share that information with others, like me, who are among the 98 percent of Americans who do not serve.  Since then I have blogged every day on many different things--profiles of people making a difference, book reviews, special events and programs--but mostly on the serious issues affecting the present quality of life and the futures of military children and their parents.

What I have learned worries me deeply.  It’s clear now that the all-volunteer army worked far better in peace than it does in war.  We’ve gone to war with a volunteer army in the past because patriotism, a clear vision of victory, and a belief in the war’s necessity brought sufficient numbers to enlistment centers.  We’ve gone to war with draftees too, but either way, we had the troops we needed and the means to spread the sacrifice more widely across the population (the inequities in the draft are a subject for another time). 

If the atrocities and the perceived pointlessness of the VIetnam War were the spark, the draft was the fuse in the explosion of discontent and protest that rocked the country and shut down support for the war. Everyone had a stake in the Vietnam War, and everyone had an opinion.  Everyone felt entitled to be heard.  Many felt entitled to be exceptions to the draft, but I remember clearly what a cloud it was over everyone’s life.

Now, with an all-volunteer military, that cloud is gone.  Service is someone else’s problem.  Ninety-eight percent of us serve our country only by the taxes we pay.  Imagine the howls of protest if George Bush had invaded Iraq and simultaneously announced a widespread call-up of young civilians and told them to be ready to serve in ninety days. Need I say that the support for the war would not have been there?  Need I say that we would have risen up claiming our right to be consulted, to understand, and to approve?  Our representatives did the consulting, understanding, and approving for us, but they are part of the problem, because almost all of them are among the 98 percent insulated from familial sacrifice by today’s volunteer military.

What we had just after 9/11 was a military of toy soldiers, taken out of the box because their owner decided to be a war president.  Like toy soldiers, our enlisted men had no voice.  Like a rainy day game played in a child’s bedroom, there was no one from the outside watching, no one to influence the direction of the game, or suggest another.

Now, a decade later, we have a real crisis within our country, because we are developing a separate military class poorly integrated into the society as a whole. We have two unpopular and controversial wars that few want to risk their lives for, and no one is required to. Lack of an adequate number of recruits and the need for the skills servicemembers have developed results in pressure (and enticement) to re-enlist. Thus the same people go off to war again and again--some now leaving on their fifth long deployment in ten years.  Most of us are aware of their existence only when we see the faces of the dead on the news. They’re not from our neighborhood, for the most part. For many of us, it’s rare to see anyone from our town or even our state. They serve so we don’t have to, and we don’t know them at all.

 We have a military made up largely of young people, many of them parents. Their families suffer enormous stress as a result of nearly continuous deployment.  Mental health problems are growing among children whose father or mother are chronically absent under frightening and dangerous conditions. Parenting deteriorates with chronic stress, and children are more likely to be neglected or abused. Children fall behind or are poorly integrated into schools when they attend one or more different schools a year. When deployed parents return they are often not the same person who left as a result of physical or psychological injuries, and even in the best of situations, reentry into marriage and family is stressful and often destabilizing. Many returning servicemembers will not seek help if they need it for PTSD or other mental problems, and they may self-treat with drugs, vent through acts of domestic violence, or withdraw from their loved ones.  Many children will live out the remainder of their years at home in these stressful situations.

 The military is a steady job with benefits in a time of frightening unemployment and shrinking educational options. Many servicemembers join for this reason, and once in, many re-enlist because the bonus looks good and their prospects on the outside do not. Indeed the military has been and will continue to be the best option for many young men and women. Some will decide on military careers, and others will count the days from the moment they first don their uniform. It’s always been that way. 

 It takes effort to remain in compassionate, caring community with people we do not know, and military families will remain resilient whether or not we demonstrate our concern.  The question is if we want to be a nation that feels invested in our military--and each one of its members--as a force that serves our common good, even when we don’t agree about what that is.  Or do we prefer to have a separate and invisible class who goes to war when they are told to, by a government confident we won’t feel sufficiently impacted to raise much of a fuss?