Those Who Have Borne the Battle (40 page)

Of all of the conditions I encountered in the hospitals, one that I think of as a haunting symbol came a few years ago in a new ward that the medical staff showed me at Bethesda Naval Hospital. It was equipped to provide medical treatment and counseling for marines who had suffered head injuries, many with significant disfigurement and cognitive damage. In this bright and airy and welcoming ward with cutting-edge medical technology, the bathrooms had no mirrors. There was a recognition that it was not helpful for these young marines, with major facial and head injuries, to encounter their own reflections other than under supervised conditions.

The remarkable medical survivors push the military and VA hospitals every day—and the system has not had the capacity or in all cases the medical means to respond very well to their needs. These shortcomings are significant, and the political-military-medical infrastructure has sought ways to reduce and to eliminate them. Importantly, there has not been a policy debate or partisan difference on the need to provide whatever is necessary for the medical treatment of wounded servicemen and -women.

Survey results reveal that veterans of the current wars do not view their experience with the medical system as positively as the veterans of earlier wars. They do not find the treatment and support programs as responsive as they need them to be, and they continue to express frustration about the red tape that they face.
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The public and political consensus to respond to the needs of wounded veterans was for several years seriously lagging in another of the major
post–World War II veterans programs, the GI Bill for education. In 1984 Congress approved the Veterans Educational Assistance Act, known as the Montgomery GI Bill. The legislation established stipends for eligible veterans who pursued education or training programs—but only for those veterans who had elected the program shortly after enlistment and had agreed to have one hundred dollars a month withheld from their pay for one year and placed in a special account for them. In 1984 this was a peacetime program, but by the first year of the new century, it was a wartime benefit. The problems with requiring new enlistees to elect and make down payments on the benefit, as well as the overall inadequacy of the provisions, were clear. Remedies proved politically complicated.

The sharp divisions that marked discussions in 2006–2008 about moving to fix shortcomings in the Montgomery program were somewhat surprising. The original GI Bill, after all, was the celebrated symbol of a successful veterans program. And veterans programs seemed sacrosanct in the American political system. The surprise is lessened, however, when we consider the immediate context—both the nature of the all-volunteer military and the nature of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. With a force that was pushed hard by frequent deployments, with a mission that had become complicated and nuanced, and with technology that was increasingly sophisticated, the military needed trained, experienced professionals. This need would not be met if too many enlisted men and women left the service following their initial enlistment in order to enroll in school or a training program.

The tension between veterans' benefits and military manpower needs was largely unprecedented. Previous wartime benefits were either part of a demobilization process (World War II and Korea) or of an engagement such as Vietnam that was sustained by the draft and draft-induced enlistments to maintain personnel goals. Reenlistments had always been critical to maintain experienced noncommissioned officers, but in the all-volunteer force, they became even more critical. The army focused on keeping its trained soldiers in uniform so that the force shifted from young and single to older and married. In the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Pentagon had no draft to increase the pipeline of recruits, and the level of technological and management sophistication required
in the modern military placed a premium on retaining trained and experienced personnel. In the midst of the war, enlistment and reenlistment goals were challenged by the nature of the war and the opportunities in a growing economy. The army especially was straining to meet its goals.

Senator James Webb of Virginia, a decorated Vietnam marine officer, former assistant secretary of defense, secretary of the navy, and acclaimed novelist on the Vietnam War and on the military, introduced legislation in January 2007 to provide current veterans with educational benefits roughly equivalent to those of the Second World War. Officials in the Pentagon did not see any real enlistment advantage coming from an enhanced GI Bill but they did project some significant reenlistment problems that would result from this.

The debate over the new post-9/11 GI Bill was not really joined until the spring of 2008—and then the Defense Department expressed more publicly its opposition to the bill. The White House joined in opposition, as did a number of congressmen and senators, largely Republican supporters of the Pentagon or the Bush administration. Senator John McCain, typically supportive of veterans programs, joined the Pentagon on this matter, expressing concern about any action that would result in a decline in reenlistments. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates insisted that any enhanced benefits program contain the option of “transferability”—so that military personnel who reenlisted and served a minimum number of years could transfer the benefit to a spouse or child. Advocates believed that such a provision would provide a means to stay in the service and still utilize the benefit—it might make reenlistment even more attractive.

The Webb bill, with the transferability amendment, was approved by Congress and signed by President Bush in June 2008. In the fall of 2009, the first students enrolled under the provisions of the new GI Bill. But the entire debate over the legislation signaled a major shift in the way many policy makers and government officials regarded veterans benefits: in addition to being a service bonus from a grateful nation, some officials viewed this program as a personnel tool in the complicated task of managing the modern military. The Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, organized in 2005 by Paul Rieckhoff and others due to their
frustration with the two major political parties to look after the veterans of the current wars, pressed hard to secure passage of the Webb bill.

In fiscal years 2009 and 2010, all four branches of the service met their enlistment goals. All of them except the air force met retention goals, and the air force was only at 93 percent of its first-term reenlistment objectives. Part of the reason for this was that the air force was reducing personnel slightly and did not offer the same types of incentives for reenlistment.
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It would be hard to overemphasize the stress that these prolonged wars have placed on the US military. Some individuals have had six or seven deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq. As of August 31, 2011, there have been 4,011,060 deployments into the Iraq and Afghanistan theaters of conflict since those respective wars began. There have been 2,344,884 individuals deployed. This would mean that the average individual serviceman or -woman has been deployed 1.7 times. Multiple deployments have been the norm.

The United States “outsourced” parts of the security and service responsibilities to firms like Blackwater and Halliburton, and the CIA discretely assumed more of a role in field operations. One critic argued, “Outsourcing war further removes the American people from the obligation to serve their nation in the Armed Forces.”
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And it largely removes the contractors from the narrative of the war, since these firms do not report actions or casualties. As many as one-half of the personnel that the United States sent to Iraq or Afghanistan have been civilian contractors. They provide logistical support, construction and reconstruction, and security services. Only a minority of the employees of these firms are US citizens.
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At the outset of these wars, particularly in Iraq, the heavily armored forces did not have appropriate armor to protect against explosive devices detonated under the vehicles. Troops improvised in the field by welding on their own steel plates, just as some purchased their own body armor.

The military members serving in these combat zones have proved impressively adaptive to changing conditions and to evolving missions. Their
rules of engagement are increasingly restricted. Although this is a necessary condition for any hope for success in a counterinsurgency war, it places tremendous pressures on the instinct and judgment of the young men in the field. One army sergeant defined the dilemma: “I don't know who I'm fighting most of the time.”
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These have been wars where there are seldom defined enemies and where there are no clear front lines. In the world of insurgency, all zones are combat zones. As General David Petraeus, then commander of the Central Command in January 2010, said of the current engagements in the Middle East, in words that echo from Vietnam, “These aren't campaigns where you muster a force, take the hill, plant the flag and go home to a victory parade.”
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It is hard to have traditional war heroes in wars like these. There are no equivalent challenges and opportunities that inspired Audie Murphy to attack and destroy German machine-gun nests or to single-handedly halt an overwhelming attack. These are different wars. The army has clumsily tried to make heroes out of Jessica Lynch, who courageously endured capture, and the inspiring Pat Tillman, who was tragically killed by friendly fire. Of course, they were heroic, but their tragic experiences were not the stuff of traditional war tales.

As of the summer of 2011, 10 Medals of Honor have been awarded to men who have taken extraordinary action in Iraq and Afghanistan. Seven of these were posthumous awards; all 10 involved heroic measures taken, including jumping on a live hand grenade, in order to protect or to save others in their units. Among the two current wars, proportionately more of the Medals of Honor have been presented to troops serving in Afghanistan. All of the living recipients were recognized for action in Afghanistan.
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As a proportion of those serving, the government has awarded far fewer medals for service in these wars. There were 247 Medals of Honor presented to men serving in Vietnam.

If there are fewer traditional heroes, there has been little disposition to find American military villains, either. Stories about the treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and the tragic massacre of civilians by marines at Haditha and the army's Fifth Stryker Brigade assassination squad in Afghanistan all received coverage in the press. But there was really none of the “all guilty” generalizing that became so powerful after My Lai. In
these current wars, Americans are less willing to judge harshly those who are serving. Most perhaps understand, as they did not in the later years of the Vietnam War, that instances or allegations of criminal behavior on the part of individuals do not mean that other troops in Iraq and Afghanistan are engaging in this same conduct. As one reporter summarized some of the analyses of this question, Americans are inclined “to believe that such occasional iniquities are aberrations perpetrated by a derelict few rather than the inevitable result of institutional failures and, more generally, the nature of the conflicts in which we are engaged.”
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This is exactly opposite of the situation in Vietnam.

If heroes dramatize wars and villains demonize them, the absence of tales about these characters may ironically make the current wars less clear. Narratives about those who inspire by their courage place some kind of human face on wars, as, perhaps ironically, do accounts of those who succumb to the depths of human weakness without any moral anchors. Wars are about weakness as well as courage—but they are also about human beings dealing with inhuman circumstances and making choices from among bad options.

A young man who had served in Iraq told me a story that reflects the complexity of these wars and the types of demands they impose. He was in a vehicle patrolling in hostile areas in the spring of 2003. They took fire from a farmhouse and returned the fire. In the midst of this firefight, he saw a frightened young boy run out of the house. He was hit in the crossfire. When the fighters in the house either were killed or slipped away out of the back, this young American ran over to the boy. He saw the youngster was seriously wounded. He was dying. So the marine held him. His sergeant shouted at him to return to the vehicle; they needed to pull out quickly, because it appeared that a larger enemy force was coming. The young man looked at his friends and then looked at the dying boy. He decided that he did not want this young innocent to die without another human being holding him. He stayed there. His sergeant was furious, angry, and afraid. The boy died in the young man's arms. He placed his body back in the bloody sand and raced back to the vehicle, and they managed to get away without any further action. He knew then and understood even more upon reflection that he had imposed a terrible risk
upon his friends, people that he cared about very much and who shared with him a very high-stakes mutual dependence.

War is in any circumstance a remarkably cruel and even barbaric activity. Yet on some basic levels, there is nothing that is more fundamentally human than the choices that one has to make in war and the suffering that those who fight incur or observe. I thought a lot of things when I heard this story, and I still think of them. One thought that dominates always is what a terrible choice this is to ask a nineteen-year-old to make.

 

 

 

 

W
HEN GENERAL JOHN LOGAN of the Grand Army of the Republic first called for the establishment of a national memorial day in 1868, he asked that Americans gather in “every city, village, and hamlet churchyard in the land” to decorate the graves of the fallen. Moreover, he urged all Americans to do this as long as “a survivor of the war remains.”
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