Tightly holding my 6-week-old son, Coury, I stared at the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington hoping I could protect him from such horrors. I remember having two other clear thoughts...the first was "Thank God that Bob Hanafin and Bob Scott Hopkin's names are not on it." The two Bobs were dear friends who survived the war but suffered in their lives forward with PTSD from their tours in Vietnam.
"Support our troops" is a slogan many sanction who also boast "family values." Mostly what this means is let the troops board first on airlines, say "thank you for your service," or other meaningless gestures.
4,486 U.S. soldiers died in Iraq. 2,234 died in Afghanistan.
1 million soldiers were wounded in both of these wars.
In other words these numbers represent members of families and these families suffer.
$6 TRILLION was/and still being spent on these wars. Money that could bolster the economy and support families in the United States.
But the death toll does not stop when or if these people come home. 21% of all U.S. domestic violence is perpetrated on family members by combat veterans. To put that in perspective only 13.4% of the men are veterans, 1.4% of women are veterans and these are not just combat veterans these are all veterans but 21% of the violence at home is caused by combat veterans.
Divorce rates have increased by 42% among marriages including veterans. 8.6% of the homeless population are veterans...49,933 people our government sent to war. 18% more soldiers committed suicide since 2001 than died in the wars. Support our troops? Even Michelle Obama, Joe Biden, and John McCain want to fund programs to support the troops after they return. 2,996 people died on 11th September 2001, most of them civilians, and as a nation we decided war was the answer to that tragedy.
My questions are: Why don't we figure out how better to deal with conflicts than sending soldiers in to do terrible things? How about we actually BE family value people and vote against warmongers? Why don't we keep these families intact in their homes?In Washington, my second thought looking at that long, black wall of names of dead children as I held my son, was "I wonder how long that wall would be if we listed all the Vietnamese that also died in that war...I bet it would go on and on and on."
So far I have only mentioned statistics involving our own troops, but as a family member of the world and as a follower of the one who taught us to love and pray for our enemies, I would be remiss not to note the families in Iraq and Afghanistan that are torn asunder.
There are no concrete numbers of Iraqi and Afghani civilians who have died...the numbers range from 210,000 to over a million deaths of civilians since 2001. BUT even the lowest number of 210,000 is a hundred times more innocents who died than those who died on September 11th. A hundred times!When...WHEN do we become true family values people and start saving families? Wars are bad for families. Wars are bad for the fabric of our society. It is time to be creative and look for other alternatives for our troops, their families, the innocent people caught in a mess they did not create and their families.
-Kathleen
