veterans of foreign wars

The Day We Shrunk the World

There’s a common narrative about the meaning of what happened in Hawaii 75 years ago this past week. It sounds something like this. The forces of evil, previously growing unchecked in their pursuit to conquer the world, had finally awoken a sleeping giant. And though they dealt her a vicious blow, they sealed their doomed fates that morning. The forces of the free people of the world answered back and with a clear and decisive victory for good in an inarguable statement of the strength of moral and just authority.

It’s not a bad narrative. And it’s not entirely untrue. There has been no more clear example of the greatness of the American expression of liberty, democracy and capitalism than the conduct of our people, our industry and our government during World War II. And for a little while, those that perpetrated the injustice of pitching the globe into a war that would kill 60 million men and women did suffer harsh and near final consequence. But both our greatness and their destruction were perhaps less permanent than any of us like to admit. Germany and Japan, a within the span of two generations are now the third and fourth largest economies in the world. Their people enjoy a stability and quality of life reserved for a handful of societies in human history. And we Americans, the victors, have found ourselves tangled in near constant war and have enjoyed the spoils of victory much differently than perhaps we would have thought.

A few centuries ago, before he became a musical and then a political debate, Alexander Hamilton pointed to the true consequence of Pearl Harbor, a century and a half before it happened. As he urged the American people towards union and the acceptance of the newly created Constitution, Hamilton pointed to the poor state of Europe after centuries of war and division.

“The history of war, in that quarter of the globe, is no longer a history of nations subdued and empires overturned, but of towns taken and retaken; of battles that decide nothing; of retreats more beneficial than victories; of much effort and little acquisition.”

Hamilton dreamed of a union unlike Europe, so vast and sturdy that we would be free from threat of external incursions. And he was right. For 150 years, the only material damage ever dealt to us was by our own hand in the bloody war against ourselves to end slavery. But Hamilton could never have dreamed of a world where huge ships could travel the Pacific in a week’s time and launch things called airplanes to destroy an entire fleet of ships in an hour. And he could never in his wildest dreams imagined atomic energy and the horrors of nuclear warfare that ultimately answered them. Pearl Harbor was the moment in time when the world shrunk. And thereafter, no one was ever too big or too united to be free from threat. Pearl Harbor was the stark realization that forever more, anything worth owning was to be owned by someone with the means to defend it.

The lesson of the last 75 years, if we take the time to complete the narrative of what Pearl Harbor means, is one where we’ve realized Hamilton’s vision in painful ways. Where America has fought battles that decide nothing. Where our retreats have been more beneficial than our victories. Where we have exerted much effort with little acquisition.

The world has changed. And the threats have changed with it. Small groups of men with conviction can inflict great injury on world powers. Foreign entities can encroach through cyberspace to impact sacred instruments of democracy. These threats are real and dangerous. But they are very different. And we appear to be content to respond to them with the weapons of centuries past-generals.

Be careful when you respond to different problems with the same answer. National security in 2016 is perhaps not as dependent on military strength as it once was. I say this as someone who spent most of his adult life in the service of arms. I appreciate the notion of service and the benefits of military strength. But we should have learned over the last 75 years that fighting ideas or economic systems with armies, generally just kills our young men and women and not the ideas. And if you staff the team responsible for the security of our people in 2017 and beyond, with generals who fight kinetic wars, as the incoming administration has, then it begs the question, what, if anything have we learned?

Fighting the last war is always how the next war starts. But winning it tends to come with the realization that you’re doing it again.

Well, we’re doing it again.

The Lost Ones

Not that long ago, someplace far away where American soldiers and sailors were deployed, there were two brothers. One was good at building bombs and the other was different. And the one that built the bombs used the one that was different to put those bombs in places and on things that killed people. The one that built the bombs did it because he believed he was fighting for one side in a war. And the other one did it because his brother told him to. He didn’t really understand why. He just knew what he was supposed to do.

First bombs…then play. First bombs…then eat.

One day they were both picked up by the local police. First was the young man with the far off stare and the odd walk that fidgeted with his hands. He flapped his ears sometimes with his fingers. He giggled with delight when he saw people he liked and he simply couldn’t resist watching his favorite cartoon over and over again on the beat up television in his family’s home. He wasn’t hard to find. He wasn’t hiding. But he was confused and scared when they took him away. He didn’t understand. He just wanted his brother. And his TV.

The one who built the bombs was a little harder to find but he was picked up a few hours later. Lives were saved in the community.  It was a good thing that was done.

I’m comfortable with sharing the level of detail in that story because they’re not real. I made them up. Once, a long time ago there actually were two brothers that were planting road side bombs in some far away place. And they were found and arrested by one of the local law enforcement teams my team was assisting. I’d forgotten about it for a long time. It was an unremarkable mission. It was pretty easy actually. I filed it away somewhere in the back of my head with a thousand other memories of far off places and semi-dramatic events.

A few years ago, on a long peaceful run in the hills of Southern California it came back to me. As the endorphin lubricated synapses fired on overdrive in my brain, I cycled through the long slideshow of my past. It’s a meditative experience that I found settled my nerves in the weeks and months after I left military life. That particular day, a thought popped into my head from a distant corner of my conscience. It was about the two brothers and a random thing one of the locals told me about them.

“One of them isn’t right. Like a child.” he said.

And then I remembered the picture of him. He looked a little off. Like he wasn’t all there. I didn’t really pay it much mind. We heard lots of things about lots of people when we did that work. Most of them weren’t true. But we knew with certainty that those two were trying to hurt people. So they had to be stopped. And we helped. And they were stopped.

But they came back to me as I climbed higher into the mountains, running harder and harder, my lungs burning, the music in my ear buds blaring. A thought that I wish I never had came to me. It was the memory of that picture and the look on that man’s face. It was the look my autistic and cognitively impaired son has in most pictures we’ve taken of him. And then the hidden guilt of countless missions and operations and times when in another environment, the human part of my brain might have been more engaged took over. I filled in the blanks of how it all happened with a guilty imagination. And a story formed thinking only of my son in that situation. It burned into my mind. And for a long time, it’s something that I thought about, even though I really didn’t want to. And it hurt.

First bombs…then play.  He must have been so scared.

It’s not a traumatic story. Not the part that actually happened. But I wanted to share it.Because sharing it makes me feel better.  We veterans have a lots of stories in different shapes and forms. And no one gets to hear them. Because they’re nearly impossible to share in the course of normal human interaction. You can’t. So you don’t. And the result is that vets are all walking around in a world connected by people sharing their thoughts and their minds real time and virtually in a world where we may never again be in the same room with someone who knows what it smells like when someone vomits on the hot barrel of a .50 caliber machine gun and it starts to boil and bubble off it. Or what it feels like when you hold an eight year old at gunpoint because he was getting water for his family and accidentally wandered into your camp. And it scared you. They’re not remarkable stories. You couldn’t make a book or a movie about them. But we all have them. And we move around 21st century America with them in our heads and an unmet need to share the language no one but us can understand. And we live, at least a little bit, apart from everyone else, no matter how close we try to get to them.

For the first time in our history Veterans serving and separating from service are at a higher risk for suicide then the rest of the public. According to a 2014 study published in the Annals of Epidemiology, Veterans who separated from service within the last ten years are more likely to take their own lives than other Americans. And not just by a little-41 to 61 percent more. It’s not the combat. Those who never served in Iraq or Afghanistan are actually at a higher risk then those who did. And it’s not the repeat deployments either. The data tells us that doesn’t really matter. What the data does tell us is that when a service member detaches, in modern day America, he or she is at high risk for substance abuse, mental illness and eventually suicide. And it’s not the war’s fault. Or the president. Or the last president. Or the next president. Or Muslims. The data doesn’t really tell us why. But I’m pretty sure I know.  So I’ll tell you.

It’s because they’ve lost their family.

Your family is who you live your life with, suffer your failures and celebrate your successes with. It’s who you lean on to get through things, even if leaning just means standing right next to someone going through the same shit you are and drawing strength from the simple notion that they exist, there, with you. And for many service members in our voluntary force, who weren’t pulled away from another life to serve briefly to be released back into that life with an entire generation of others with the same experience, that loss of family is complete and sudden. And that alone is trauma enough to matter.

I separated from the military twice. And both times, I experienced a deep emotional impact. As a person with no history of mental illness, addiction or acute trauma, and the support of a strong family and church, I got through. But not by much. When you take away any of that support or add previous trauma or mental issues like anxiety, depression or even ADHD, the risk is far higher. For the past two years, my wife has worked as a drug and alcohol counselor in a facility for homeless, addicted veterans. And the common links she makes with almost all her clients is the existence of a pre-existing issue and a lack of a support network when they separated.

It’s not what the American people have asked us to do. It’s what happens to some of us, when we stop.

There’s a common idea that Americans fighting American wars and struggling through the trauma of combat are killing themselves in droves because of PTSD from their service in those wars. The 22 a day number has spread through social media and gained tons of attention. But both the ubiquity of the PTSD term and the 22 a day number are deceptive. Over half of those 22 a day are over fifty years old with decades between their deaths and their service. And statistically, most veterans coincidentally fall into the largest at risk bucket for suicide in America-white men over fifty. The 22 a day is more of an eye opener for the mental health, addiction and suicide epidemic in America at large. Because there’s 90 other Americans a day that kill themselves that never served. And it’s a different problem, with a different solution. The veteran issue is much more focused. And it’s not about fighting or serving . It’s about stopping.

So what can you do?

Well, this Veterans Day, start with a little more than the Facebook posts and expressions of gratitude. Those are great. But we get them all the time.  And for this problem, it really doesn’t help that much. The ones in need aren’t looking for gratuity. They’re not looking for you to feel sorry for them either. Chances are, they loved their service. And if they fought, they wouldn’t change the experience that they had for just about anything. The ones in need are looking for something else- their family. And if they don’t find it soon after they get out, many of them will be in trouble quickly. So if you can, go find someone who loves someone who just got out and share this with them. And if you know someone yourself, go talk to them or email them or Facebook message them. And instead of telling them you appreciate them, ask them a question. Ask them to tell you what it was like to serve in your military. And ask them what they saw. And then listen. And then make plans to get back together and talk some more. And don’t act like what they did was incomprehensible to you. Or that you could never do it. Chances are you could. Because what seems like appreciation, is really just a wedge between the old world and the new for us. And it hurts more than it helps.

If you’re really interested in digging in and caring, go buy Sebastian Junger’s Tribe. It’s the best account of what’s really going on here that I’ve come across. When I read it, I was moved to tears by his recognition of this message and the crisp description of what I lived through. And once you read it, go give it to a vet. It will help. Because this isn’t about pity or public guilt or shame. It’s about reestablishing the connection to their next world. And until they do, they’re lost. And the ones that stay lost for too long, stay lost forever.

Happy Veterans day. Now share.