This Veterans Day feels especially challenging to me.
I want to speak about how we Americans have supported/not supported those who enter the military to serve our country.
This is something that I have watched since my teens. I remember when the Vietnam vets who returned from the mess of a political misstep we called the Vietnam War were taunted in the streets as “baby killers’ when they wore their uniforms. More of those vets killed themselves on their return — through suicidal and substance abuse deaths — than the total lost in Vietnam to foes or to “friendly fire”.
What have we learned?
Next, we committed to a series of unfortunate events like operations Desert Storm/Shock and Awe. Then, 9/11 and on to Afghanistan. We minimized all of this; rolling the mess into the phrase “Our Endless War.” This year, with a lurch and a shift to the left, we extracted ourselves from the Afghanistani part of that fiasco.
And what have we learned?
What of our men and women who committed to serve our country over that time span? Some of our service personnel weren’t even born when the Twin Towers went down.
How do we welcome them home?
How do we hold ourselves and our communities responsible for the harm’s way in which we placed them? For the trauma load with which they have returned?
This Veterans Day, with the shadow and the shame of “Twenty years in Afghanistan for what?” still fresh in our consciousness, I invite you to ponder these thoughts and to make space in your heart for all veterans.
And to imagine a day when we actually prioritize the housing and healing of our service personnel when they return.
Opeyemi Parham, M.D.
Connecticut River Valley Abenaki, Nipmuk and Mowhawk lands