Posted 11/10/2008

HAIL TO AMERICA'S VETERANS

The Methodist minister asked each veteran in the congregation to stand during the service. Many stood: veterans from WWII, Korea, Vietnam, the two Gulf wars, Iraq and Afghanistan. All were honored with applause.

But in the adult Sunday School class afterwards, one member complained bitterly about the inappropriateness of a Christian minister honoring those who had fought and possibly killed for their country. Some others nodded in agreement.

Apparently these "Christian" complainers have forgotten what Jesus was all about. Compassion. Forgiveness. Love thy neighbor.

It is easy to complain about a soldier if you have never been put on a "kill or be killed" battlefield. Harvard's anti-military faculty is an example of such service-ducking complainers.

Combat does terrible things to a human being. No one ever comes home whole.

Besides the obvious wounds and concussions, there is an attack on the mortal soul of all those who served under fire. Doctors, nurses, corpsmen – all suffered the same violent stresses.

It happens in five stages:

The first stage is fear of being able to kill.

The second stage is fear of being killed.

The third stage is fear of not fighting well.

The fourth stage is being proud of your killing ability.

The fifth stage is guilt over having survived while your buddies died.

No one who survives constant fear and horror of combat come home whole. All have cashed in their youth and innocence.

World War II veterans came home to the GI Bill of Rights and the foolish college customs of the postwar years.

The vets were deadly serious about their studies and received top grades. They refused to wear "freshman beanies" and participate in drunken beer parties. One vet attending Northwestern University on a football scholarship turned it in upon winning a math scholarship to study things like astrophysics and rubber geometry -- science that the rest of us had never heard of.

And because the vets were too serious, too studious, too hardworking and too intolerant of nonsense, they were ostracized by the frivolous high school grads who had never served. Vets were called weird.

The soldiers and marines at the Yalu River were frozen and killed in summer uniforms. Those who survived suffered horribly. They fought and bled in an unnecessary war caused by foolish mistakes of Secretary of State Dean Acheson. Worse yet, the war was mismanaged long-distance from Tokyo by General Douglas MacArthur. It was miraculous that Korean War vets did not come back to America thoroughly embittered.

The Vietnam War was a tragedy because our government leaders bet on the wrong side. President Lyndon Johnson believed in the great "Communist Conspiracy," the false "domino theory" and in supporting murderous dictators. Communist leader Ho Chi Minh was more revolutionary than Communist – having admired George Washington all his life.

When incompetent General Westmoreland introduce his notorious "search and destroy" strategy, he turned a half million soldiers into murderers. Blow-dried newspaper readers back home bragged about body counts while the soldiers in the field turned to killing civilians, fragging their officers and escaping into a heroin-induced paradise. Too many of these vets were broken by the horror of war.

I could go on and on. But most of you are aware of the human and moral cost of our latest wars. Can you imagine sending a man or woman into a land of terrorist bombers and suicide bombers two and three times? More than 40 percent of Iraq veterans have suffered multiple concussions – and the cognitive impairment that comes with such injuries. Iraq veterans have been prone to suicide, wife-beating and murder to an alarming degree.

A man or woman who fights for his country suffers for his country. And such suffering lasts a lifetime.

For a Methodist minister to honor veterans is, in my opinion, highly appropriate.

It's also highly Christian.

(click here for a printable version of this article)