Death Of A Soldier

He lived nearby and I'd met him several times, talked with him, a career Special Forces guy. After retirement from the military, he spent a year or two in Iraq, working for an infamous private contractor. I was enough acquainted to know he'd done a lot, seen a lot, of war. And didn't want to talk about it much.

Couple of days ago he put a gun to his head and killed himself.

I don't know if he'd been diagnosed with PTSD or if he'd had any treatment for it. But it's hard not to assume that his life as a warrior had to do with his self-inflicted (and, if so, society-inflicted) death. Soft-spoken, smallish but obviously fit, almost shy, he wasn't the stereotype of the John Wayne (RWS™ hero and hypocrite faker that he was) version of the Green Beret.

In soldiers there are countless stories, of pain known or unknown, public or forever hidden away, suppurating in a tortured mind. War disproves that stupid but oft-repeated adage: whom it doesn't kill, it damages forever. Those who love war, who think it ennobles us, who see efforts to end wars as "cutting and running" have no idea (because, for the most part, they've never participated) how awful wars are on those who fight them, no matter the result.

During President Obama's press conference the other day, the reporter from Fox "news" took him to task for not using the word "victory" in describing his plans for Afghanistan. What an asshole question, from the asshole propaganda machine that would love for the so-called war on terror never to end. Rightly, the president talked of success as opposed to victory; in that context it's an important point. We can have successes in fighting terrorism; we'll never have "victory." Which means that we need to move away from the concept of endless war. We need to love it less. And mostly, we need to stop using it as a political weapon at home. It diminishes us, it trivializes the personal horrors, it dishonors the sacrifice of the man I'll never see again. No: it ignores it entirely. Which is a large part of how we manage to keep doing it.

That, and the idea that all we need to do is say we honor their sacrifice. What an empty phrase, how easy to say, a lie we tell ourselves in order to ignore our guilt, to pretend it's all okay.