I watched a good episode of Bill Moyers' program last Sunday, after I
came home from church. In it, Bill Moyers talks with Vietnam veteran
Karl Marlantes, who is the author of the book What It Is Like to Go to War.
Karl talked about such issues as the challenge the military faces of
turning people who have been taught by their culture not to kill into
killing machines; how young people, the ones who go to war, are more
pliable than people in their thirties; the discouragement that people
coming home from war experience when they feel that nobody cares about
what they just went through; and how applauding returning soldiers like
we're at a football game is not the appropriate response to their
service, and what we should do instead to honor them.
It's
a thoughtful discussion, and I don't think that I'll see Veterans Day
and Memorial Day the same after watching it. I don't always buy into
the propaganda that soldiers overseas are fighting for our freedoms, for
I am skeptical that some wars that we've fought have anything to do
with our freedoms. But I think that it's important to care about
people's pain.