Peter J
By Peter J Munson
A week before I deployed to Afghanistan in 2010, my wife and I volunteered for a few hours at our daughter’s elementary school. As we left, her teacher told the students that I was an officer in the Marine Corps about to leave on deployment. “A nation does not survive,” he said, “without men like that.”
It was a heartfelt statement. I thought of it often while in Afghanistan; it felt most poignant when my detachment of transport aircraft flew each one of the 119 bodies out of Helmand province between June and December 2010 to make their final trip home. Near the end of our deployment, I asked my fellow Marines to always remember the fallen. I asked the living to honour the sacrifices of their dead. Not by mourning forever, nor by seeking vengeance, but by honouring their comrades’ sacrifices in the choices and actions of their own lives. I asked them, in the words of Oliver Stone’s movie about another war, to find a meaning and goodness in this life.
Since I returned home, a darkness has grown in me as both I and our nation have failed to live up to the sacrifices of these young men and women. I had no expectation of “victory” in Afghanistan or Iraq, whatever that would mean. Nor did I expect some epiphany of strategic insight or remorse from the nation’s brain trust.
I just found that I could not square the negativity, pettiness and paranoia in the discourse of our country’s elders with the nobility and dedication of the men and women I had seen and served with in Afghanistan.
Over time, as I listened to the squabbling, I realised that about the only thing Americans agree on these days is gratitude bordering on reverence for our military. It troubled me that the sum total of consensus in our discourse is deference toward the defenders of our nation.
Eventually, it dawned on me that the focus on defence was the root of our problem.
After the September 11, 2001, attacks, the US sent its military off to war and fretted about post-traumatic stress disorder — but paid little attention to the fact that America itself was traumatised. Americans became angry and withdrawn. We are fearful and paranoid because after a strike on our nation we chose to focus on defence rather than the resilience and vitality that made America great. In our defensive mindset, we bristle at every change in a world undergoing an epochal transformation.
We have little reason to be so negative. Certainly the rest of the world is gaining on us, but this represents the success of explicit US policies. After the Second World War, the US sought to create a world of economic interdependence and prosperity, hoping to banish the malaise that helped precipitate a global conflict. We were confident and focused on the positive tasks of expanding our economy rather than fearing change.
WP-Bloomberg
By Peter J Munson
A week before I deployed to Afghanistan in 2010, my wife and I volunteered for a few hours at our daughter’s elementary school. As we left, her teacher told the students that I was an officer in the Marine Corps about to leave on deployment. “A nation does not survive,” he said, “without men like that.”
It was a heartfelt statement. I thought of it often while in Afghanistan; it felt most poignant when my detachment of transport aircraft flew each one of the 119 bodies out of Helmand province between June and December 2010 to make their final trip home. Near the end of our deployment, I asked my fellow Marines to always remember the fallen. I asked the living to honour the sacrifices of their dead. Not by mourning forever, nor by seeking vengeance, but by honouring their comrades’ sacrifices in the choices and actions of their own lives. I asked them, in the words of Oliver Stone’s movie about another war, to find a meaning and goodness in this life.
Since I returned home, a darkness has grown in me as both I and our nation have failed to live up to the sacrifices of these young men and women. I had no expectation of “victory” in Afghanistan or Iraq, whatever that would mean. Nor did I expect some epiphany of strategic insight or remorse from the nation’s brain trust.
I just found that I could not square the negativity, pettiness and paranoia in the discourse of our country’s elders with the nobility and dedication of the men and women I had seen and served with in Afghanistan.
Over time, as I listened to the squabbling, I realised that about the only thing Americans agree on these days is gratitude bordering on reverence for our military. It troubled me that the sum total of consensus in our discourse is deference toward the defenders of our nation.
Eventually, it dawned on me that the focus on defence was the root of our problem.
After the September 11, 2001, attacks, the US sent its military off to war and fretted about post-traumatic stress disorder — but paid little attention to the fact that America itself was traumatised. Americans became angry and withdrawn. We are fearful and paranoid because after a strike on our nation we chose to focus on defence rather than the resilience and vitality that made America great. In our defensive mindset, we bristle at every change in a world undergoing an epochal transformation.
We have little reason to be so negative. Certainly the rest of the world is gaining on us, but this represents the success of explicit US policies. After the Second World War, the US sought to create a world of economic interdependence and prosperity, hoping to banish the malaise that helped precipitate a global conflict. We were confident and focused on the positive tasks of expanding our economy rather than fearing change.
WP-Bloomberg
