Separate Worlds

January 4, 2008

The New Year brings dozens of calls each day for the Center.  There is hardly time to wish everyone a Happy New Year between the ringing phones.  This is no surprise to us, as most of the members of the military went home for “Exodus Leave” (formerly known as Christmas Leave).  Many people, once home, have even greater reluctance to go back to the military.  This is especially true for men and women who have been deployed, of course.

One of the most tragic features of military life is the disjunction between it and civilian life.  This separation cuts both ways.  A Marine, who called the hotline asking for help, talked in between sobs about getting back to the real world. In an article in today’s Washington Post, Donna St. George describes “a litany of noncombat deaths in Iraq, which number more than 700, from crashes, suicides, illnesses and accidents that sometimes reveal messy truths about life in the war zone.”

The military counts on this same, far-reaching separation to keep the civilian world from knowing the full truth about what happens in their name.  The military also counts on this separation to keep troops in the military, creating an isolated, militaristic lifestyle —I can’t tell you how many times I have spoken with military personnel who worry that there are no opportunities in the civilian world for them.

But this separation comes at a high cost exacted from families torn apart and veterans who cannot readapt to the “real world.”  This is part of the root of the suicides and homeless veterans. 

And this same separation is the real root of U.S. citizens not accepting that war is an obsolete tool of statecraft, at best.