Sunday morning I ran across an article in the Washington Post condemning Russia’s lack of concern for the trauma brought home by the soldiers it is sending to war in Ukraine. On another page in the same paper was an article about the U.S. sending more soldiers back into Somalia to participate in the war there. In the second article, there was no concern expressed for any trauma that might be brought home by our soldiers sent to Somalia. By the same token, I recall no such concerns for any of our soldiers sent to Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and all the other war-torn countries we have engaged our troops in – at least not at the beginning. The only concerns for post-deployment trauma in the American media has come after the troops return, and even that level of concern never caused much of a stir.
This raises two issues. The first is the double standard to which the American media adheres. According to the American media, when countries that are not our allies get involved in war it is always for imperialistic purposes regardless of the cause, but when the U.S. or its allies get involved in war it is always for patriotic and noble purposes. (E.g., Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is purely an imperialistic land grab by Russia, but the U.S. invasion of Iraq was a noble defense of our “national interests”.1) When our opponents send troops to war, the American media laments the trauma to their people, but when we or our allies send troops to war, the American media only expounds on the glory and valor of our troops and disregards any trauma that invariably results.
The second, and more important, issue is that trauma is a product of war that is experienced by all who are sent to war and by the many friends and family members of those who return. In war, there are no real winners except for those few who profit from the sale of the weapons and supplies of war. Like cheerleaders at sports events, they will remain spectators on the sidelines cheering and goading the combatants to more and more violence that both entertains and profits them with no regard for the trauma which will come. Yet, the American media will never point this out.
It is time (I should say, well past time) for Americans to wake up and assess the benefits to our nation of our forever war, and weigh them against the price we are paying and the debt that will be passed on to our children and their children for generations to come. It is (again past) time to hold our government accountable for our forever war, but the media, which is the primary institution for helping us do that by providing us with the necessary facts, is failing to do so. So it is also time for Americans to hold the media accountable and demand facts and truth about our wars and not just rumors, opinions, analyses and platitudes. Otherwise, we will remain in the dark2 and continue to lament the trauma of war, not just by returning soldiers but by all of us, far into the future.
1 As a case in point, Vladimir Putin clearly had cause for believing events in Ukraine posed a threat to his country. (I won’t go into those reasons here as I have done so in a previous blog.) But his reasons have been discounted or ignored by the American media. On the other hand, there was ample evidence that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq but the American media kept insisting they were and applauded the decision to invade that country as just and patriotic.
2 As an aside, the motto of the Washington Post is, “Democracy Dies in Darkness”. The sad truth is that the darkness has already fallen.