"The closer your destination the more you're slip sliding away."
Did Simon and Garfunkle ever nail it.
ISIS is cruelly and provocatively murdering innocents. Naturally we are appalled and outraged. They must be brought to justice. Revenge, however, has proved to be quite a corrosive fuel for foreign policy strategy in a hornet's nest of a region even the word "quagmire" does not do justice. See W's reaction post-9/11: He "thought 'anger'" after the attacks, and well on into his second term. Veterans, families and all we US citizens, not to mention Iraqi civilians, know the tragic results.
Our current President and his chief military advisors are doing one heck of a dosey doe. We can watch it in real time, like the train wreck in Mission Impossible II. Wasn't that cool? Not. This is real.
While we already have boots on the ground, POTUS says "no boots on the ground." While we are engaging Iraq war 3.0, he says it will not be another Iraq. Obama's "no boots on the ground" turns out. within days, according to CJCS Gen Dempsey to be... boots on the ground. No deals with Syria? Nope, all the while we're burrowing back channels. This is a really good show; why aren't we all watching? Why are we not, as Chuck Todd said, learning from the experience of Iraq?
We ordinary citizens elected our leaders; they are our employees. Are we banging down the doors, demanding comprehensive debate and an up or down vote? Are we flooding our representatives' websites with our demands that they take responsibility for the war expansion? Have we thought through the costs? Will everyone have skin in the game? Doesn't look like it.
Or will our veterans and families -- again, after twelve long years of continuous war -- have to bear the incalculable moral burdens, the physical and psychological injuries and the family shockwaves? Looks like it.
In recent polls, a majority of American voters across party lines favor military action against ISIS. But, most also think it will further endanger our country and the region. Hmm. What does this mean? Is there no meaning to it? Are we simply not thinking, unable to stop and reflect in the midst of a powerful blinding desire for revenge? Dare we judiciously ponder the consequences of proposed military strategies? Or, have we thought it out and concluded that we're willing to have our revenge at the cost of becoming less secure overall? If so, that sounds like a bad bargain.
Or, are we all in the midst of a collective traumatic dissociative reaction? I think so. Here's the thing about trauma: Can't live with it, can't live without it. In a new book, Waking Up From War, (Pitchstone Press, Spring, 2015) I describe how it works in the hope we reclaim our constitutionally granted say so amidst this reprise of the dark dance known as the blind leading the blind into a war that is not really "war" until the costs come home and detonate, like an IED, in our collective faces.
Think I'm being overly dramatic? Take a spin down to the Burn Unit at Brooke Army Medical Center. Go to the websites sponsored by VA and DoD, watch the videos, listen to the stories. Then stop, take a few breaths, take a few more and ask, "Is it worth it?" That's what the veterans who fought in Fallujah have been asking and talking about among themselves now that the victories they achieved at such cost are falling apart before our very eyes. Talk to a few. Listen. It does everyone good to stop look and listen. Before we jump.