WHO WE ARE-(Report: American Vets Died Waiting for Appointments.) It probably has escaped your attention that from 1776 to this day, America has been at war nearly continuously with somebody somewhere.
From the revolutionary war to the endless Indian wars, from the shores of Tripoli to the halls of Montezuma, from Sumatra, South America and the South Pacific, through civil war and world wars, the Korean wars in the 1870s and 1950s, Vietnam, Persian Gulf, Bosnia, Kosovo and so many others, America has not gone a single decade in its whole history without fighting with somebody somewhere, presumably for truth, justice and the American way.
For all our talk of peace, no other nation in the last 200 years can quite compare for putting its people in harm’s way in the name of freedom.
As you enjoy this long Memorial Day weekend with beer and barbecue, it is a certainty only a few of you will give even a passing thought to the millions of Americans who died in combat zones, or even the many thousands of military men and women who lost their lives, their limbs or their sanity more recently in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Sure, flags will be planted in military cemeteries and politicians will put their patriotism on display as long as the cameras are rolling. But the vast majority of us will indulge ourselves to excess as usual and take it all for granted just as we always have.
You would think that the appalling suicide rates among active military personnel and veterans since 2000 and the epidemic of PTSD would turn this Memorial Day into a day of soul searching.
But introspection is not the American way, nor is real respect for those who have served.
In fact, we as a nation have dishonored our military from the birth of the nation to this day. It is nothing to take pride in.
Back in the last days of the War of Independence with the British ready to surrender their last stronghold, New York City, and head home, the fledgling American government was broke and the public resented paying any more taxes with the war finally won.
The soldiers in Washington’s army had been promised half-pay pensions for life and back pay for all the years they fought for god and country without a cent in their pockets or money for their families.
They were paid with scrip, certificates that promised payment for their services at some unspecified time far in the future.
By the spring of 1783 with the war at its end, a black market flourished in these certificates, 10 cents on the dollar was paid to soldiers desperate for whatever they could get.
By the summer, there was mutiny in the ranks. Soldiers seized weapons stores and munitions. Some 400 soldiers mobbed Congress in Philadelphia and threatened to take action but the ingenious and devious Alexander Hamilton talked them into releasing the delegates with the promise swift action would be taken.
He wasn’t lying. Congress did move swiftly, fleeing to Princeton the next day and soon decided the best course of action was to send the soldiers home with their muskets and uniforms to barter and more empty promises. They called it a furlough but fully intended to disband the Continental Army for good once the soldiers were no longer assembled into fighting units that might threaten to ruling elites.
The Philadelphia Rebellion was squelched and the rage dispersed along with the soldiers. The ruse of our nation’s fathers worked for a while though there was a series of skirmishes and confrontations leading to all-out hostility in early 1787.
That’s when Daniel Shays organized hundreds of former soldiers into regiments with the intention of seizing the weapons in the armory in Springfield, Mass., unaware that the state’s governor had gotten wealthy merchants to put up the money to hire a militia of 3,000.
The Shays Rebellion was crushed by government’s private army with its superior numbers and weapons. Hundreds were indicted, 18 sentenced to death, two actually executed. Shays eventually was pardoned even as he was vilified in the press. He died penniless, his scrip never paid, his pension never made good.
So treating our veterans poorly is an American tradition. That’s how the country was founded.
I was drafted into the Army during the Vietnam War, as unjust and unconscionable a war as we ever fought. I didn’t see combat, spending most of my two years getting drunk in Alaska’s far north so I got no grievance. But I dare you to ask those who saw action how it felt to come home from ‘Nam or Iraq or Afghanistan to an ungrateful nation that didn’t want to hear their war stories, that looked at them with suspicion like they might be time bombs.
Memorial Day is intended to honor those who died in our many wars. Maybe we should change that and honor those who lived through war and came home from battle scarred forever to one degree or another.
(Ron Kaye is a lifetime journalist, writer and political observer. He is the former editor of the Daily News and the founder of the Saving LA Project. He writes occasionally for CityWatch and can be reached at [email protected])
-cw
CityWatch
Vol 12 Issue 42
Pub: May 23, 2014