I didn't ask but thank you...

Since I have the tendency to over empathize emotionally with just about anything that lives, walks or breathes, watching war movies is a particularly draining experience. I have watched quite a few over the holidays. In particular, I cannot get “When We Were Soldiers” and “Stop Loss” out of my head. These two movies, about Vietnam and Iraq respectively, focus on individual soldiers and the many types of battles they are asked (forced?) to fight. I cannot even begin to think I can understand what these men experience and feel, or stop feeling, during their time in the military. But I appreciate that someone is trying to help us all understand.

Watching their stories, I feel loss, anger, nothing, and everything, all at once. I cry for the minutes, hours, and years they have lost in being away from their loved ones. I mourn how their lives have been forever altered by the physical and emotional damage their bodies sustained in battle (and that came home with them as they try to return to ‘normal life’). Is there a normal life after you go through something like that? I feel empty inside when I realize that many of these men lived shorter lives than I have. I know I could never have the strength they do, to go on missions when they know their fellow soldiers, or they themselves, could be killed.

Ultimately, I feel loss because I feel I have to answer the “why?” of it all. Why did they suffer and sacrifice? The answer is hard to say out loud. For me. For my husband. For my family and friends. For our country. They have died for ‘us’. But I never asked the military to fight these wars. I never wanted 18 year old boys to go shoot and kill and be killed, in my name. At the same time though, since these men fought and are fighting, my husband, brother and many others don’t have to go. As Simon and Garfunkel put it they ‘died so their brothers could be free’. Of course I am thankful for this, eternally thankful. But I can’t help thinking, I didn’t ask for anyone to begin the fighting. Does anyone need to be participating in these wars? Furthermore, I don’t even think that these wars are actually making my family, country, or my future children, safer. Some days I think the wars are even making things worse since the world’s opinion of America has become so abominable (I am often asked by Japanese acquaintances and friends to explain ‘my country’s reasons’ for fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I feel so lost when this happens). I would like to believe the ‘making our country safer’ objective is being achieved, since human lives are being lost, but I am just not sure.

There is a scene in “When We Were Soldiers” I cannot forget. The main character is studying the reasons why the French were unsuccessful in their war against the Vietnamese in order to avoid making similar mistakes. Yet, when he arrives in Vietnam and is given his orders, all the same mistakes are set up to occur. He knows it. But is commanded to lead his men into slaughter anyway. And he does. How? How do you find the strength to knowing lead the young men of your troop (Who all have wives and families back home? Who live down the street from you?) into a battle you know is hopeless? How?

Similarly, the main character in “Stop Loss” tells a friend he cannot go back to the Army because “he cannot continue to lead his men into slaughter”. For both these men, to continue to fight is their orders. They carry them out. But at what cost? Did we really need to order them to do that? To place the burden on them of knowing the lives lost were under their watch? Because it is not you or I that feel this burden of guilt (even though we are all responsible). It is the men directly involved in leadership in these battles who will replay it over and over in their minds.

Another scene in “Stop Loss” that caught my heart was at the VA hospital where young men (the ages of my brother and sister) are recovering from lost limbs and other injuries. What have we as a country done to them? Yes, most of them are happy to simply have survived the war. Many want to go back and continue fighting. But I cannot help thinking, are their injuries necessary? More importantly, are we as a nation going to provide what they need to recover, to deal with the emotions, and face a long life of doctors, hospitals, pain and prosthetics? If Vietnam is any indication of how our country thanks its veterans and helps them through their recovery and re-entry into society, then NO, we probably won’t.

Again, that empty feeling of loss for these men (and in some cases women), who sacrificed their limbs, mental stability or lives only to be half cared for, or worse, forgotten, by their country. And that nagging word again, “we”. I don’t like that word because I don’t feel I chose to fight these wars. I don’t feel I chose to not plan properly for the scale of damage, for the number of lives lost, for the length of time or amount of money these battles would cost. The officials who made these decisions were not my election day choices. But they were made nonetheless. These things have happened. We are all responsible for the next steps. And for all the young men and women who have lost things, for us.

I know that my pacifist attitude, my dislike of war, can seem naïve. The world is a big, complicated place. Conflict is unavoidable, some say. This might be true but do we have to fight wars to get richer, to protect territory, to assert power. Could there be different ways of working out disagreements? I don’t know what those are but when I think about all the young men and women and how the wars we have ordered them into have permanently altered the courses of their lives, and their loved ones lives, I can’t help but wish for something different. Yes, I know, I am sounding a bit like “let’s create a commune where everyone loves each other” but I cannot help feeling that war is so wrong. Always. For everyone.

When “Stop Loss” finished today, I went outside. It had started to rain lightly and I just stood in it, staring. The world is so big. I could never tell all our soldiers what I feel, how sorry I am that I am partly responsible for what they had to go through, for what they are going through, how I wish I could understand better. I live in my peaceful, mountain village in Japan and these things often seem so far from me. Heck, I don’t even pay US taxes anymore. But that doesn’t mean that I am not an American. Just because I am thousands of miles from American soil, doesn’t mean that there aren’t still wars being fought in my country’s name (or wars not being prevented by my country, as in Gaza right now, when innocent civilians are dying).

So is there any resolution for my feelings?

-Remembering these wars are in my name, all our names.
-Asking the government to provide adequate veterans’ benefits.
-Asking for a shift of focus from fighting wars in other countries to solving problems in our own country.
-Asking that men who have sacrificed for our country be allowed to move on with their lives once their commitment has finished.
-Praying for other methods of conflict resolution to be successful.
-Trying to understand.
-Placing hope in the new administration taking office today.
-Remembering those lives…and their effect on my life.