Oh, War

Today at lunch I was reading the Westword and in the latest issue there is a cover story about returning Iraqi vets. I already know the numbers well from class; roughly 25% of returning vets have PTSD. That is an astounding amount, for those of you who don't spend all your time talking about trauma and PTSD, like I do.

Anyway, that's really not even the point. The point is, in reading the article about this particular vet, my heart suddenly cracked open and I nearly burst into tears, right there in Chipotle.

I have always been anti-war, pro-peace. Staunchly. People who supported war and/or went off to fight were always, to me, the enemy more than any foreign country or terrorist threat. Reports of dead soldiers from Iraq rarely even caught my attention as my thoughts were always...they knew what they were getting themselves into.

Geez, I can be such an asshole, right? Finally, today, I understood how callous I have been in my thoughts and feelings towards those in the military. Surely, most of the people who join the military really DO feel like they are doing the right thing, like they are fighting for a just cause, their country, their freedom, their families. And all I could ever do was look down on them and think they were full of shit, just because they didn't see things my way. I think of myself as open-minded but it took me 27 years to realize this? For shame.

I am truly embarassed about my lack of empathy in this situation and hope that in the future I can be more respectful towards serving-in-the-military-type issues.

On the other hand, I still just don't get it. While protecting your country, freedom, family or whatever may be deeply important to you, how can there be so many millions of people that think anything at all will be solved by killing others? That is such a juvenile way of dealing with problems, and yet millions of people make careers out of it, devote their lives to it. The success of societies through peace and not war is such an obvious truth to me that it absolutely boggles my mind that not everyone gets that.

Why, why, why is this not a universally accepted truth, like needing air to breathe or water to sustain life, or gravity to stay rooted to the ground?