Where were you when the war ended?
A lot of people don’t know what I’m talking about. (Not you Crasstalkers – you’re on top of everything). The Pentagon has officially declared an end to the mission in Iraq. It’s been almost nine years.
The New York Times went to Times Square to see if anyone was celebrating with American flags and to see if any sailors were kissing nurses. Nope. Just the usual tourists taking pictures of the giant ads. The Times noted the official end didn’t even lead on Times Square’s news tickers.
That’s pathetic.
Granted, this is very different war from World War II, which was celebrated madly in Times Square. If people didn’t have a relative or friend in Iraq, they probably didn’t pay rapt attention. There was no draft. No mass sacrifices were required by the public, such as gas rationing. War coverage and correspondents cost money, so if people don’t want the information, the networks aren’t going to go nuts giving it to them once the bloom was off the war rose, so to speak. And post-September 2008, all news audiences wanted to hear about was jobs, the economy, and jobs.
But it pisses me off — personally. As the neice of a man who died before I was born because he never made it home from Vietnam; as the granddaughter of Korea veteran, as the great-granddaughter of a WWII veteran — it saddens me that so few people paid attention to the people the volunteers who, in many cases, served multiple tours, who missed major family milestones, who came home terribly injured, who will always have major disabilities to overcome.
The non-soldiers, too, need to be remembered. Iraq is one of the most dangerous countries in the world for aid workers. Untold number of Iraqi civilians have died.
Journalists, who do far more dangerous and important work than I do, have died and come home maimed. Several years ago, I was at work when we learned one of our colleagues and her crew had been embedded with troops in Iraq when they encountered a roadside bomb. I helped to prepare her obituary, not knowing if she was alive or dead. Her two crewmembers didn’t make it. Neither did a soldier. She was not expected to live, but did. She could not speak when she came to because of the respirator; the first question she wrote was regarding the condition of the people with her.
That story has always stayed with me, as representative as what has happened in Iraq over the last decade. Person after person I’ve have the honor of speaking with have always said — on or off the record — they wanted to make sure the other person was okay. They would rather be hurt themselves than see their comrade in arms hurt.
Approximately 4,483 American troops have died in Iraq since the war began. I’m not including all the other stats. because I’ll be writing all day. Here’s a link.
Give ten bucks to the Veterans of Foreign Wars this holiday season. The young ones are coming home.
Next up: Afghanistan.
