By Rabbi Ben Kamin
SAN DIEGO — God help our veterans. Yes, this is the day after what was originally called Armistice Day, November 11, 1918—when the Great War (World War I) ended. Many saw that horrifically bloody conflict (The United States entered in the final year, 1917, but our “doughboys” were bludgeoned in ditches like the Europeans and also choked on mustard gas) as but the prelude to Hitler, the Axis, and the cataclysmic World War II, 1939-45.
Fifty-nine million people, mostly civilians, died in that second inferno, including over 350,000 of our American servicemen and women. They died far away from homes and hearth, from bullets, stabbing, burning, torture, typhus, starvation, drowning. Not all were buried or even found.
The inconclusive Korean conflict followed on the fault lines of WWII, 1950-53. Later emerged the long disaster of Vietnam, 1960-73; several smaller but still very dangerous encounters and operations in places such as Grenada, Lebanon, Bosnia, Somalia. The X and Y generations, untouched by conscription, national urban rioting caused by military and foreign policy and political assassinations (and we are grateful they are so far spared all these), have grown up watching video-wars in Iraq and Afghanistan on television, laptops, on cellular units.
This is the Monday shopping day after Veterans’ Day. It is also the day after too many people no longer know the history, the meaning, or even what it is. It is the day after the theme of national service is an actual concept in the minds of our young people and not just the theme of a Super Bowl halftime show.
It is the day after schools and hospitals (including veterans’ medical centers) were too easily subject to budget cuts while corporate greed is further serviced by outrageous bailouts. It is the day after the soldier in Afghanistan doesn’t get good boots and armor from his government while the Dallas executive gets shoes and a fur on her government bailout.
However difficult and challenging the world is today, we have already survived something that is unspeakably huge, and military historians know that the Allied victory over the Axis of Germany and Japan—a global conflagration that was as much about race as it was about anything else—was accomplished by a razor-thin margin. Though engaged in two regional wars today, many Americans don’t know—have no concept—about what civilian sacrifice, rationing, women replacing men in the infrastructure—are all about.
Every day we should thank the veterans of our military. We should salute those from the Korean War—the one everyone forgets. We continue to salve the wounds of our Vietnam veterans who were shamelessly humiliated and denied benefits and employment upon returning from a war they never conceived. We pray for our men and women in uniform in Iraq and Afghanistan and this has nothing to do with the calendar.
America, flawed, depressed, confused right now, is a survival kit nevertheless. From Ft. Hood in Texas to Garrison Heidelberg in Germany, may we learn the history and know what day it is.
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Rabbi Kamin, a freelance writer based in San Diego, may be contacted at ben.kamin@sdjewishworld.com