All that matters is “his” pleasure…
PC Magazine wanted to let everyone know how “RealTouch” is bringing military families together by providing virtual conjugal visits. The idea is that the stateside military spouse would stimulate a rod, okay a phallus, hooked to a computer that would transmit the stimulation to a tube that the servicemember overseas would be able to stick his member into and receive said stimulation.
Now there are a couple problems with this:
1) Privacy. Most servicemembers do not have that much privacy overseas. I know the Navy certainly doesn’t.
And perhaps more importantly:
2) Sexism:
PC Magazine tried to overcome the sexist idea here by saying:
But Rinaldo sees a genuine social benefit in his tech, so he said he’s trying to get in touch with the U.S. military to have RealTouch approved as a method for a sort of virtual conjugal visit. (Presumably, female soldiers could operate the rod while deployed and send the main unit home.)
Clearly, they (and the makers of RealTouch) don’t understand that women have sexual needs to and that deployment is every bit as hard for a woman as it is for a man in this regard. In RealTouch’s mind, only males need sexual gratification and women are simply there to service male sexual needs. Female sexual gratification just isn’t an important component of a “conjugal visit.” It’s nice to know that Americans think military spouses are worth nothing more than providing sex to soldiers.
Furthermore, neither RealTouch nor PC Magazine understand that this doesn’t really help gay couples, unless gay spouses/partners are male and have 2 units. Lesbian couples are just SOL, but then…their women, they don’t need sexual release…right??
My friend just made a good point…Even if you are fine with this, what happens if the internet goes out mid-session?
As most of us know, we’re lucky if we get to see our spouses on skype, even luckier if we get to have a conversation that doesn’t come through completely garbled, lucky if we get email. I can’t imagine it would be more important to try to get him off overseas than actually see my spouse and try to have a real conversation with him. But, I guess I forgot women are nothing more than sex objects designed to service men’s sexual needs. Love. Marriage. Mutual communication and respect. These are not important needs in RealTouch’s mind.
There are so many real needs servicemembers have overseas, like baby wipes, which often substitute for a bath, razors for shaving, warm hats (in approved colors), coffee, deodorant, toothpaste, etc. If RealTouch or PC Magazine want to help our men and women overseas, I suggest they start by addressing real needs first, rather than reinforcing 19th century ideas about men and women’s sexual needs and desires.
I am more than disgusted. Unfortunately, there aren’t words for how disgusted I am right now.
Happy New Year
Happy New Year
Watching the clock tick down to 2012 in Kabul – sending a Happy New Year shout out to my deployed husband, and remembering how many New Year Eves we’ve spent in different time zones, different continents. Now I’m not saying that we do a lot of celebrating when he’s home on NYE… we stay home, watch movies, wait up for midnight and hope for a better year. This is one of those “holidays” that we don’t really observe – not exactly a Hallmark Holiday – but one of the determinedly “we must have a good time/have a party” holidays.
This year – he’s in an MWR building in Afghanistan with other NATO troops, saying it in multiple languages, without champagne or even a decent beer; I’m in my chair with the cats and my knitting and a cup of tea.
To our friends – the ones who are with their spouse and family; the ones like me skyping their New Year wishes; who are sending their thoughts to a ship at sea, or a dusty base; the ones in Europe watching Paris or Prague in lights or cuddled up with their soldier in Graf or Frankfurt – we wish you a happy, healthy, peaceful 2012. Thank you for reading and commenting and joining us on Left Face. Thank you for listening to us; yelling at us; telling us we are absolutely full of it, or that you think we got it. Thank you for your friendship.
Happy New Year!
Next Year
Like so many of you, I’m spending my holiday without my husband around. We’ll Skype tomorrow (if the bandwidth allows voice, it never allows video) or have a quick phone call before he heads to the DFAS with the rest of the team, who will make a determined effort to be happy and bright… I’ll open gifts he sent (his are waiting for his R&R) , he’ll open the gag gift I sent. And the refrain will be, as it has been for so many holidays and special occasions – next year.
For many families, there was an unexpected gift of their service member home for the holidays, although for some it has been tempered with the knowledge that shortening one deployment may mean another in a short while. Some in our community are celebrating survival of their loved one, albeit changed for ever. Friends are dreading an imminent deployment cruise; for some there is a PCS looming. But, that’s next year
The stereotypical “Norman Rockwell” style holiday, whether you celebrated the Solstice a few days ago; whether you are lighting the menorah candles; or putting that last ornament on the tree and hoping the lights all work; isn’t usually in our military family lexicon. If they aren’t deployed, they could have staff duty officer that day; or be a single soldier sitting in the barracks missing the family gathering. But we make our holidays when we can, after all, we are a “resilient” bunch [groan]. Some families put up a tree in November and opened presents before Dad or Mom went downrange, or headed out on a cruise; for some like me, the presents will remain wrapped waiting for R&R – next year.
However you are spending your holiday and whichever one you are celebrating this week, Left Face wishes everyone a peaceful one; finding our joy where we can. And remember, “next year”…
LAW
Iraq – the Colors are Cased
I watched the colors being furled this morning on BBC. The military community internet is full of reflections on Iraq – the 9 years of war left a huge footprint in our lives. Opinion is and always was, divided on this war. Those of us who were living through the deployments, those who were sitting by phones waiting for the once a week call, those who crossed yet another day off the calendar, were of many different minds about the war itself. We either turned on the news obsessively, or refused to watch anything to do with it. We didn’t wonder about the rightness or wrongness of the war. We were too busy trying to hold our lives together, we were too busy comforting our children, we were too busy trying to figure out how to handle our changed lives when our spouse or child came home forever changed.
I remember the first months of my son’s Iraq deployment, when mail took weeks to get to him; I remember trying to figure out where he was. Sadr City, Najaf, Fallujah, Balad, Mosul, those names became as familiar to me as the towns in Minnesota. When my husband went downrange, I learned more names – the names of the little towns where the funerals of the Minnesota Guardsmen were held. The excruciating sight of the mourning families, the stunning view of the entire population of the town standing vigil on the side of the road watching the procession pass, the heart stopping roar of dozens of motorcycles starting up at once when the Patriot Guard accompanied the cortege to the cemetery, those were seared into my memories. The stunned shock when we were told about the Surge – you don’t forget the sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach very easily.
Watching the Walter Reed scandal explode on the pages of every newspaper in the country and reverberate around the world, listening to the excuses of those who told us “you go to war with the Army you have”; was so very painful. As Section 60 at Arlington filled up, and the Patriot Guard rode mission after mission, our families watched in pain and dread that they would eventually have to be in that first car after the hearse. I watched the divisions in the military spouse community split us apart. The war was played out not only on the TV, but on the internet. Blogging became our outlet, and the stories of pain, love, hurt and triumph ricocheted through the community. Lines were drawn, and friendships ruined.
Family support became the new watchword for DoD, as they scrambled to figure out what to do, when they realized that they needed to do a lot more to support families; that the old saying “if we wanted you to have a wife, we’d have issued you one” didn’t apply; that this new all volunteer force was younger, had families that were coping with back to back deployments and needed support. Programs were thrown up, some remain, some collapsed, others are limping along. Support organizations sprang up, some collapsed, some should be closed and those in charge put in jail, some are working hard.
The flag was furled today – but the pain goes on. The families that were shattered, a friend who lost a son and misses him every day; the wounded who will persevere but whose lives were irrevocably changed; for them it’s just another day. The new programs that were put in place to help, are under threat of budget cuts, but the problems continue long after the flags are furled and cased. PTS doesn’t care if a flag is flying or not, TBI isn’t going to be healed because a page has been turned in our history. For military families, this war is NOT over. For many of us, it never will be. The country may think they’ve heard the last of the Iraq War; they will never hear the last of it as long as there are veterans and families who will need the support of their country.
DOD photo by Erin A. Kirk-Cuomo
They call them Gold Star Mothers for a reason.
This weekend I received a Christmas card from a Gold Star mother I wrote to you about in October, thanking me for thinking of her. It’s hard to express how humbling this card was. Here is a woman who gave her son for our country and then she turns and thanks me for thinking of her. I mean, what do you say to something so powerful.
Things aren’t ideal here, but more and more every day I wake up in humble gratitude that I am surrounded such amazing people who sacrifice so much and then turn around and are gracious and continue to think of and serve those around them. It makes me realize how much more, during this season of giving, I have to give.
I hope to live up to her example.
Pearl Harbor – a Day that changed the World
That day, the one that changed our country, and changed the world, is now 70 years in the past. But if you ask a veteran, it’s yesterday. Those men and women who stepped up, they remember. They remember their friends, the ones who didn’t come home; they remember the horrors of the Bataan Death March or Guadalcanal; the bone chilling cold of the convoys across the Atlantic or the brain frying heat in the Coral Sea; the mud of Normandy or the pelting rain of the road to Rome, the sand of Tobruk or the lava sand of Iwo Jima. They remember.
The family members who remained at home, who struggled to maintain a “Normal” life, with Meatless Monday or Wheatless Wednesday, who took part in paper drives, who willingly sacrificed because they were told that everyone was – they remember the dread of seeing the boy on the bike with the telegrams, holding their breath that they wouldn’t come to their house.
Today we remember the Greatest Generation of the 20th Century – men like my dad who served in the Atlantic and the Pacific on USCG Spencer; my uncle who was wounded while serving in the Army under McArthur; my uncle who became a gunner in the Army Air Corps; and my grandmother who waited to hear from her sons, who put a three blue star flag in her window. I remember and honor my WW2 vets.
Do you have a WW2 vet in your family? were you brought up with stories about their ship, their company, their plane? We’d love to hear about them. If you would like to honor them with a post here, please let us know in the comments.
The Military FAMILY Caucus – or was it?
Military Family Caucus? The meeting was of the Congressional Military Family Caucus. Well, the Congressional part was taken care of, with Congresspeople attending and many staffers milling about. Military – well that was taken care of, with enough gold braid and rank to make anyone nervous. A LOT of brass. DoD staff were there en masse – rows of them. Family – well, there were representatives of many groups, Blue Star Families, MOAA, National Military Family Association … but very few “independent” or freestanding family members. Of course, that could be because the announcement of the Caucus came very close to the actual date of the conference.
As we sat in the auditorium, I realized this was not going to be anything like the last one. This event was set up as a presentation – not a discussion. We listened to speeches, from those of the Congress people who are the co-chairs, telling us they want to hear from us; from Sgts Major of Guard/Reserve/AF/Army, telling us to make sure we tell them what we think; … and then Generals, telling us they are open to listening to us. For over 2 hours, we listened to speeches. The open mike period finally arrived – and 2 or three personal stories took everyone’s breath away and most of the time was spent with each person on the dais telling us how terrible it all was that this person was treated in this way and how they should have contacted this group/this person. Once again, it took a person coming to DC and standing up at a conference to get their particular problem looked at. It shouldn’t take that, these problems are not completely out of the ordinary, they needed someone in that vaunted chain of command to LOOK, LISTEN AND WORK ON IT!!
Other questions were about veteran employment, veteran health care. Don’t get me wrong, I know how crucial they are. But this was the Family Caucus! Even some uniformed service members I talked to were wondering why there was so much discussion of service member issues, and veteran issues. Where were the discussions about family issues?
The trek to the break out groups was long, from the Capitol Auditorium through the tunnels to the Cannon Office Building – that’s about 10 minutes for us. How long the wounded warriors took? Good question. A very nice young staffer finally brought some water bottles to everyone after we begged for it. (no food, no drink in the auditorium). As we crammed ourselves into the tiny conference room, seats were filling up rapidly. A quick intro by the congressman chairing the group ( telling us again how much they want to hear from US), intro of the subject matter experts and a decent discussion started. Of course, we were limited on time, and everyone agreed that we wanted to have a few more hours to actually talk, to bring out ideas, to get some responses.
I talked to attendees who were in other breakout sessions and the fireworks were definitely in the Veterans group – during which a person asking a question and telling them how it REALLY WAS (she’s an expert, believe me) was told to sit down and shut up by a congresswoman because she dared to tell them what was truly happening in the WTUs. We all noticed that the DoD subject matter experts kept bringing up programs that 1)no one ever heard of, 2) that we all knew didn’t work, 3) were in the planning stages. None of us felt that anyone really WAS listening to our concerns.
In my group, the back two rows were taken up by DoD Staff who worked in the Office of the Under Secretary. I’m hoping they were taking notes, not only jumping up and defensively arguing with the military family members. We were doing what we were told we were there for – to TELL THEM what is going on. Their job was to sit down, shut up and LISTEN. Yes, afterwards get the person’s information and get with them for their particular issue, but don’t argue with them as they talk to you. Their story is what it is! They have these issues, the program failed here, or didn’t work there… don’t argue with them about how it should have worked.
That’s the problem. This turned into another example of SSDD – Same Stuff, Different Day. Many questioned why there had been so little prior notice of this meeting to military families. I knew a few people who would have attended, if they had known of the date and time, but who live out of state. The audience in attendance was either invited by the Congressmen, or from groups that had received notification of the event. One commenter thought this was very carefully choreographed, that it was a great photo op, but not much more.
That’s sad. When this Caucus started, we all hoped it was a way for our concerns to be heard, for us (the military families) to have our voice, not only as adjuncts to our service members, but as a discrete group with our own problems and solutions.
A Sub Wife – on Military Family Month
A Guest Post from mirgladd:
I’ve been casually tossing ideas for this post around my head for a couple weeks now. At first I was all, Gah! What could I possibly have to say that would be any different from what every other spouse has to say? Then I thought about consulting a few friends, to make sure that I properly represented all of us bubblehead wives & didn’t miss a thing. Then I thought holy crap, what can I say that won’t embarrass the dickens out of my husband should someone from his command see this? I’ve finally come to the realization that this post isn’t about representing sub wives, & honestly, I’m pretty sure this wouldn’t be the first (or the last) time I make someone at my husband’s command cringe – that kind of seems to be something I’m really awesome at. This is about us. Forgive my scattered thoughts & randomness.
I happened upon LAW’s post about guest bloggers on Veteran’s Day. My husband, D, & I were driving to a pre-op appointment. I was trying to settle my pre-op nerves by making a mental list of everything that had to be done that weekend. There was absolutely no doubt that the next few days were going to be insane. The movers had come the day before to pack out the majority of our things, that day would be filled with needles, labs, & paper work for my upcoming hysterectomy, the next with packing up the rest of our life in Georgia, & Sunday would be the day we loaded the moving truck & headed for South Carolina. Although it may be for a lot of military wives, the move wasn’t a sad thing for me. Even though I’d spent the majority of my twenty-seven years in Georgia, as the daughter of a railroad man, my life had been packed up & moved to some part of the state many, many times. I never lived in one place for more than a few years growing up, so I’d had the moving itch for quite a while. D & I had lived right outside of the Kings Bay sub base for nearly five years – the entire time we’d known each other – & I was ready to begin the next chapter of our lives. Maybe I’m a little odd (okay, so there’s really no maybe about it), but the only somewhat sad thoughts I had about moving were about leaving the only home our boys had ever known. That house, our first home, was where we’d brought our boys home from the hospital. Yeah, there were a lot of amazing memories there, but I knew there were memories waiting to be made in South Carolina. I don’t know if it’s all because of my family’s near nomad existence or if it is because of my own military service, but it’s not the house I cling to, that gives me a sense of home. Isn’t that one of the requirements of being a military wife, the ability to make a home out of a cardboard box if the need arises?
So our crazy busy week flew by, & here we are. It’s the Saturday after Thanksgiving & a cool 65ish degrees in South Carolina. I’m eight days post-op (& uterus-less, which just blows my mind). My three year old, Chop, is hanging out on the couch watching Olivia, while my eighteen month old is snoozing through his afternoon nap upstairs. D headed back to Georgia early this morning for some mandatory training on the boat. I look around & there are boxes, boxes, & more boxes. There are bare walls. This is house is literally almost twice the size of our place in Georgia. I close my eyes & listening to the faint sounds of Zilla snoring through the baby monitor, & I realize, this is the next few months of my life. D has been on leave the last two weeks, first to make sure the move went smoothly, & then to help take care of me & the boys while I recover from surgery. The rest of the guys checked in off of leave this morning before training, but when D finishes today, he’ll be headed right back up here to us because the boat was kind enough to allow him to take an extra week of leave since my recovery time is closer to six weeks than eight days. That is a wonderful thing, & believe me, I’m oh-so-grateful that they are giving us those extra precious days, because when his leave is up, it will be months before I see my husband again. This isn’t your average PCS. The boys & I will be staying in South Carolina while D returns to Georgia for one last run. Deployment number ten. In four & a half years. TEN. As I type that I can’t help but think back over those ten patrols. Patrol one – two weeks after we committed the rest of our lives to each other. Patrol two – three days after we found out I was pregnant with Chop. Patrol three – Chop was four days old. Patrol five – I found out I was pregnant with Zilla before the boat was gone even twenty-four hours. Patrol seven – this one was short, but unexpected; D felt so bad about missing our third anniversary & racked his brain the whole five days he was gone coming up with a special anniversary gift, only to be rushed to the CO’s state room the second they moored up to hear that Zilla had been born seven weeks early (happy anniversary sugar britches!). Patrol eight – the next patrol is the last patrol, yay! Shore duty here we come! Patrol nine – “Uhh, babe, I’m SO sorry, but things changed. The next one is the last one, I promise!”
Now patrol ten is gaining on me. D won’t be home for Christmas this year. It will be our first Christmas without him, my first Christmas without him. So we’re decorating our tree & making Christmas cookies tonight because, luckily, Chop won’t remember that we made them in November – he’ll just remember that we made them with Daddy, & that’s what matters. Am I ready for this patrol? No. Absolutely not. I’m never ready. When the day comes & I have to kiss him goodbye, I will cry. Like a baby. I hate that the Navy thinks they need him more than I do. Because I need him! I need him like I need my next breath of air! I have my days where I don’t want to put on a brave front – not for my boys, not for my family, not for the other wives, not for anyone. I just want to go curl up with D, bury my face in the hoodie he’s wearing, & stay there for a while. But deep down, I know that when I committed myself to him, I also committed myself to the Navy. I vowed to love him until I take my last breath, & with that, I vowed to find my big girl panties & be strong when the Navy takes him away. And that’s just what I’ll do.
Military Family – A Little Bit Of Everything!
A guest post – that describes so many of us – that makes us all realize that Yeah – Military Families are a pretty amazing bunch!
Warning: this package contains… a little bit of everything.
by ScarletVirago
I volunteered to write this post about my military family for November, Month of the Military Family, without taking into account that I am also signed up for National Novel Writing Month, Thanksgiving, my birthday (which I’m happy to ignore, but evidently my family is against such tactics of denial), various holiday activity/decorating preparations, FRG events and the normal, everyday stuff one does as wife, mother and owner of a dog with ADD.
Not the time to be expounding on the trials and virtues of being a military family in 2011! I thought. But then I thought, no, it’s the perfect time, because what else is being a military family about than herding this crazy mash-up into something resembling order – or at least organized chaos?
The Army is all about organized chaos. Leaving aside the political commentary, an organization (and I use that term loosely) which must plan, structure and label half a million serving members PLUS their civilian families can’t be anything but chaos! I actually feel kind of sorry for them. Especially since I know my family is one that can’t really be labeled.
My family consists of one Sergeant First Class in the US Army, one former workaholic single mom, one fourteen year old girl who prides herself on being the opposite of normal, and the aforementioned canine with attention deficit. We live in Germany, where we’ve been stationed for the past two years and nine months. My husband is career military, having joined the National Guard before he even graduated high school and went active duty shortly thereafter. I, however, became a first-time military spouse six months before my 30th birthday when we married six and a half years ago. We don’t use the term “step-parent” because it’s irrelevant in our situation. We’re nerdy and we laugh a lot and we’re highly allergic to drama.
None of these descriptions are likely to be found in a standard DoD report about the typical Army family, which is more concerned with the target 17 to 24 demographic, and yet…
We don’t often feel excluded. Don’t get me wrong, there are times when antiquated attitudes really get on our nerves. There was that one time when the sergeant registering us in DEERS noted that I was keeping my maiden name and asked my husband, “And you let her get away with that?” I’m still not sure how that sergeant managed to keep all his body parts, except that hubs was prepared for such nonsense and has faster reflexes than mine, which tried to launch me – claws first – right out of my seat. There have been conversations with DoDEA teachers who are more concerned with the amount of sex depicted on television than they are about the lack of college prep materials for their students. There have been captains who’ve stated that the wife of an enlisted soldier is not as good as the wife of an officer. All of which makes me go, “Buh?” and “Asshole!” in equal measure.
But even as I understand that these attitudes are still around, I believe they are being phased out of systemic pervasiveness. The Army is more than the sum of its parts – it’s also a reflection of the society it represents. For every sexist sergeant, there’s a female doctor who complimented me on my choice to keep my name for my daughter’s sake, school counselors who go above and beyond for my kid, and leaders who make it a point to appreciate my volunteer time. It’s unlikely that we’re going to find another family that matches our description in the military community, but by virtue of being part of that community, it’s equally unlikely that we’ll find our match in the civilian world.
Where else but within the military am I going to find that understanding for the emotional fatigue that digs in around month seven of a year-long deployment and which is so different from the month eight frustration or hopelessness at month nine? Where else are those liberal feminists who understand what it’s like to drop everything and run to the aid of a woman whose politics and/or religion they despise? Is there any other classroom where complete understanding and support for kids with deployed parents takes priority? I don’t think so.
My husband is mostly conservative. I’m mostly liberal. We’re both atheists. Our teenaged daughter is entertaining some radically socialist ideas. We like it quiet, our dog likes to bark. In our family, we make it all work by celebrating a healthy love for debate and the occasional use of a muzzle (not always for the dog). It’s been my experience that the Army family is maybe not so celebratory about diversity, but it is no longer trying to avoid inclusiveness. It may bungle the attempt with weird policies, but to be fair, inclusiveness has a learning curve.
Our family lives at the intersection of “Military Family” and “Atypical” and we’re not the only ones. It’s a growing neighborhood of free thinking, patriotic, gay, religious, single parent, blended families. I think those of us who live here understand that “Military Family” already includes all of that. It will be great when military leadership, government and the rest of America gets it, too.
Anti-war protester meets servicemember: the story of my military family
Once upon a time, I was a master’s student in a small college town in the MidWest. My life changed in ways I couldn’t even imagine on 9/11/2001. I was teaching an introductory science lab that morning and my flip flop broke, so I rode the bus home to get a different pair of shoes. On the bus, I heard the NPR report of the attack. I remember listening to it and thinking that this was someone’s distasteful homage to H. G. Wells. It didn’t even occur to me that this might be real.
I understood and supported dealing with the people in Afghanistan who attacked us, but the whole area where I was, and it appeared the whole country was primed for war. Iraq was a done deal in the American people’s minds. I remember protesting before the invasion. I remember being threatened by fellow college students, being called at traitor to my country. “America: Love it or Leave it” was thrown in my face on more than one occasion.
Shortly after the Iraq War began, I made a bet with my friend that I could not find anyone decent on the internet. I did everything I could to make myself appear an unattractive candidate for dating and marriage, but shortly after signing up for a dating site; I was contacted by Big Dawg.
Big Dawg had the deck stacked against him when it came to winning me over. It was like “How to lose a guy in 10 days” before that was even a movie. Iwasn’t interested in a relationship. The fact that he was an active duty Naval Officer did not help his case. My Dad and grandpas are Veterans. My Dad vividly recounts what the country was like during and after Vietnam. I didn’t want any part of that.
But Big Dawg was persistent. He was honest and he intellectually engaged me about the war. By this time it was starting to become clear that some of my concerns about Iraq were valid. He never sugar coated anything for me. If anything, he shared some of my concerns, but he wasn’t in Iraq, he was protecting America on a ship. Somehow, in both our minds, this was different.
He told me about his passion for serving his country. He told me about how thoroughly dedicated he was to giving back to the country that gave his grandfather a home after WWII. His idealism about America was infectious. It was the first time I realized that people signed up to serve our country for all sorts of different reasons. It wasn’t just a jobs program. Few people joined because the idea of taking someone’s life excited them. People join because they love this country, because they believe in something bigger than themselves, because they feel called to protect the people around them. These ideas seem corny somehow after a decade of war, but in listening to one of the students I work with discuss why he wants to join the military, I hear these familiar tones.
Big Dawg didn’t win me because I was in love with his uniform. It was the hardest part about him for me to accept. He won me by being decent, honest, thoughtful, kind, and compassionate. His sense of duty to his country and to his family was something I have rarely seen. It reminded me of the ideals my father and my grandfathers embodied.
We’ve been married now for almost 8 years, all of them overshadowed by the specter of war. In that time, much of his idealism about this country has been shattered, which has been difficult to watch. We’ve both lost friends to injury, suicide, and death. All of it has worn heavily on my spirit. I have watched so many people who had spit on me, who rushed to judgment and to sending young men and women into war, turn and pretend they had nothing to do with the decision. Worse still, they have variously blamed my husband and other soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines and their families for the war they (the American people) created. Americans argue that this decision to serve in a war subsequently proved suspect justifies Americans disregard of these men and women. They advocate throwing them away, cutting their benefits, relegating them to mental illness and homelessness.
My husband hasn’t been spit on in the streets the way that so many servicemembers were during and after Vietnam. What is happening now is far more insidious. People get on the internet and anonymously spew vitriol any time a reporter has the temerity to raise consciousness about the hardships facing veterans created by the wars America overwhelmingly chose. I talk to my father about this turn of events and to him this is Vietnam in the internet age.
I am still staunchly against the Iraq war. That will never change. I am against some of the things that happened there. I have great compassion for those who honorable served and returned to a country that believes they can be disposed of like a fast food wrapper. I have even greater compassion for military spouses and children who have spent most of their lives with a parent or spouse at war, who now have someone return to them that can never and will never be the same as the person who left. No military family member will walk away from these wars unscathed. They have encountered the American people’s disregard of the wars and those involved in them for some time. They know they face much of the same in the future, and perhaps worse as the 99% of Americans turns their backs on the 1% who have served.
I look at Big Dawg’s and my wedding picture on my desk and I can’t even comprehend how young and naïve we both were. We thought the greatest thing we would have to face is competition between our careers. There is no way I could have foreseen what has transpired, the prices paid, the lives changed, the callousness of the American people.
I can’t help but wonder, when I remember only a handful of people speaking out against the Iraq War, where were all of you who are so self-righteous in your indignation now? I didn’t see you at the protests. I did protest this war. I did everything I could do to prevent it and failed, but I chose to stand up for and with the families that have been affected by this war. I’ve chosen to stand by an idealistic young sailor who feels that his highest calling in life is to give back to the country that saved his family. You rushed to war and then went back to your TV dinners. Now you throw up your hands in horror at what you have done and blame everyone else for your choices.
I remember raising concerns that these wars would become another Vietnam because so few Americans had skin in the game. I remember being scoffed at by many people for articulating this concern. It is depressing to realize I predicted the future. I refused to have a child and expose them to this war, to the worry over a father torn from his family and sent to a distant land. Big Dawg’s time in the military is almost over. Big Dawg and I are hoping we will have our first child soon. I try to imagine how we will explain all that has transpired to him or her. I try to imagine how we will explain that while I am deeply proud of my husband’s sense of duty and honor to this country, I would rather die than see my child endure the same type of callousness and carelessness my father and now my husband have endured at the hands of a fickle public who sends people to war and then spits on them for going.
I look forward to the end of these wars. I want the pain to stop, the deaths to cease, the families to be whole again. I worry that our callousness as a country will cause the war to come home for our veterans, as they battle broken promises of mental and physical health care for themselves and their families. I worry that more of our friends will take their own lives. I worry my friend’s husband who lost his legs in Afghanistan will be unable to get the treatment and support he needs. I worry that my friend’s soul will be overtaxed by caring for him for the rest of her life. I don’t believe, even as I prepare to take a permanent position next year, that the wars will ever be over for us. They will never fade into memory. I don’t believe I will ever wake up devoid of heartbreak over the lives changed by the events of 9/11 and the bloodthirstiness that followed. Our little military family will carry this burden long after the last of Big Dawg’s uniforms are mothballed.
We are no longer the young idealist couple who believed we could take on two high-powered careers and the world and win. We are weary. We look for smaller things, days we don’t have to send care packages, or drop friends at the airport to fly to Afghanistan. We appreciate the fact so many of our friends have made it home relatively unscathed. We spend our time and energy helping out other military families bruised and broken by this war. We are grateful for every day we get together and for every day apart that doesn’t include a combat zone. We are also scared that he won’t be able to get a job simply because he is a veteran.
Thanksgiving is this week. Almost a decade ago on Thanksgiving, Big Dawg asked my father for my hand in marriage. As you gather around your family on this day of gratitude, I beg you to please soften your hearts. Don’t let the Month of the Military Family pass you by unnoticed. Holidays are particularly rough for military families. Please take a moment and help a military family by standing behind what America promised to those who would go to war so that others could be spared. Contact Congress and convince them to enact your will and protect the benefits you promised.
