Misplaced Importance

No, this isn’t my update on the Canadian political scene, though I will be putting one up when I get the chance to sit down and type it out.

I just read a very interesting story from Men’s Journal Online talking about Iraq from quite a different perspective. Michael Ware is a CNN reporter. He’s spent the majority of the past 6 years in Afghanistan and Iraq. He’s been shot at, attacked, kidnapped, and came about as close to being executed as you can without ending up in a pool of your own blood at the end of it. The troops like him because he gets out of the Green Zone and goes out with them, dives right in to the deep end where he’s in the same mix of bullets they are. He’s also a very fucked up individual. While I have no doubt the story’s sort of been ‘sexed up’ a bit, I also have no doubt he probably isn’t exactly a healthy individual mentally. The weird thing is, he almost seems like some kind of war addict. He keeps heading over there trip after trip after trip. He can’t seem to get enough of it. The very thing that’s destroying him inside is the thing he keeps going back to, like he’s stuck in the downward, endless spiral of an abusive relationship. Anyway, I thought it was an interesting article, so I figured I’d share it.

This actually comes back to something that’s been rolling around in my head for the past couple of days about the war as a whole. We always hear about the fallen, the ones who have died in the fighting. I have no problem with that fact…these guys went over there, where-ever there may be, and willingly sacrificed themselves for the flag they have sewn to their shoulder. They damn well SHOULD be talked about. However, when was the last time you remember hearing or reading or seeing ANYTHING about the ones who got hit and didn’t die? The ones who got shot up, or blown up, or burnt up, but they made it home…well, not home, but a rehab hospital? See, with each successive war, medical technology and body armor improves so much that guys are making it home with catastrophic injuries, ones that would have brought them home in a body bag even 10-15 years ago. Multiplke limbs torn off, 3rd degree burns to 70% of their body’s surface, 8, 9, 10 gunshot wounds. How is it everyone just seems to be perfectly fucking cool forgetting all about that?

I’ve been wondering things like this ever since a couple of nights ago when I caught UFC Fight Night ‘Fight For the Troops’ earlier last week. It was a good show, actually…some pretty damn good fights (and unofrtunately a couple of unpleasant injuries…one being one of the most grotesque sports injuries I have ever seen, and just a complete freak thing). The whole thing was broadcast from Fayetteville, which is the home of a huge military base down in the States. Every single audience member was anj active duty soldier. During the broadcast they were pledging for donations to the Intrepid Foundation. You know that decommissioned aircraft carrier in New York Harbor? That’s the Intrepid…the foundation that shares it’s name bought it and set it up as a floating museum. Now they raise money for the construction of medical facilities and home assistance programs for vets and their families. Anyway, the night raised something like $4.5 million through donations and an auction of memorabilia, which is pretty good. All of it is going to go towards an 80,000 square foot medical facility for soldiers coming home with catastrophic injuries and what the military terms TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury).

Anyway, the whole thing really bothered me. Not the event, or the donations, or the pledge drive…the basic fact that it was even fucking necessary. Think about it for a second. The government and the military is willinjg to send these guys there, then they get fucked up OVER there and yet the government and the military can’t find fucking funding to build a goddamn hospital to TREAT them when they come back?! In what world does that even start to make a lick of goddamn sense? And, Hell, the facilities they DO have are so badly funded they look like something from a Third World country in crisis! How in the Hell do you send a guy somewhere, and then not back him or his family whatsoever when he loses both of his legs?! And I’m sure it’s quite comforting to the family of a soldier with a TBI that you can take the time to come up with a ‘more pleasant’ little term for his brains being half blown it, or jangled around in his school by a concussive blast, to make it ‘more palatable’ to the masses (sort of along the lines of the despicable explaining away the accidental killing of bystanders to a bomb blast as ‘collateral damage’), yet you can’t actually find the fucking money to set up a facility to TREAT it.

A couple of times during the broadcast, they showed pre-taped pieces with some of these vets, or showing some of their fighters visiting them in some cramped hospital out in the middle of nowhere. The thing that REALLY got me was them THANKING their visitors. These guys go overseas to serve their flag, they lose both their legs, or get half of their skull shot away, or have their entire face literally melt from an IED igniting their vehicle…and THEY are the ones giving the thanks? And why are they doing so? Simply because someone is actually telling their damn story. Someone is actually shining a little light in to this dark little corner and, for one brief moment, actually showing it to people.

Here we have banks receiving HUNDREDS of BILLIONS of dollars to cover the fact they continually made horribly stupid loans. We have auto makers set to receive TENS of BILLIONS to make up for the fact they’ve been too fucking stupid to innovate and follow their own product’s shifting market. We have a Pentagon infrastructure still focused on squeezing billions of bucks from the government for equipment that became antiquated and unnecessary as soon as the Cold War came to an end. How in the Hell do these guys, instead of just losing it and showing up in Capitol Hill with a goddamn M4 and letting loose, THANK a viewing audience that probably helped kill any funding for the hospital they need because ‘Goddammit, I want that fucking 500 dollar tax cut!’? So, instead they’re left literally BEGGING for donations so that maybe, pretty please, can they receive some fucking medical care. The whole thing has really been bothering me for the last few days, and I guess I just wanted to vent a little.

Is the situation any better up here? Hell, who knows! Our government and our media show the same total lack of interest in even seeing how the wounded are doing as their American counterparts. I don’t want the klieg lights of the media blazing down on these guys’ lives as they try to get them back, but could we at least PRETEND we give a fuck for five minutes, and maybe see if there’s SOMETHING these people might need to help them along the way?