Veterans Day

Joe Biden said today that veterans are the “spine of our nation.” Doug Gottlieb, guest hosting an ESPN morning show, said that it was because of soldiers that we can sleep well at night. Many talked of thanking soldiers for all that they do. Most of what was said was quite unremarkable. It is what wasn’t said that interests me.

I heard nothing said about who is being thanked, and who isn’t. I know the Heritage Foundation has said that there is no demographic difference between military recruits and the general population, but the Heritage Foundation is not exactly impartial. Plus, their conclusions were extrapolated from data based on zip code, which isn’t that useful. I want to know how many of the people doing the thanking are thanking soldiers for doing a job they had no interest in doing. I want to if the people being thanked are truly representative of those doing the thanking. I also would like to hear more about why people join the military, and more in the way of a discussion of the best ways to choose soldiers.

I heard very little curiosity regarding soldier’s experiences, particularly soldiers’ experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan over the last ten years. It almost seems as if most of us would like to thank them, and leave it at that. Some of us would like to bring them home, and leave it at that. We want to leave it at thank you. We don’t want to understand them or their experiences. Maybe we can’t, but we’re not very interested in even trying.

I seldom hear thanks being given to the others who work to keep our democracy strong, people like teachers, social workers, community organizers, foster-parents … lawyers. To be honest, I don’t hear enough thanks at the grocery store check out, but that’s not where I want to go here. The deployment of troops is not all that has made America. For that matter, the contribution of many soldiers only started during their service. It may not be a good thing to have too much acknowledgement of the force and violence side of democracy. It may help to dictate a certain kind of action and involvement in the future.

None of this is to say that we shouldn’t be thankful for veterans. It is just to say that we should understand more about who we thank and who we don’t, why we thank them, and what we are thanking them for.