On Veterans Day, let’s reflect on the costs of war

We rightly pause on Veterans Day to honor the sacrifices of those lost to us in our various wars and other military actions. We thank veterans, military personnel and their families for their service and sacrifice. We repeat worn political clichés while we barbecue, watch war movies and shop the sales. We speak highly of the need to defend this country and honor our troops, but we speak little of the motives or justification behind the march to some wars. Let me suggest some other lines of thought on this Veterans Day.

Learning from the past seems to be of limited interest across the broad U.S. population, and in some political circles. Those unmindful of history are bound to repeat its mistakes. Our nation takes its citizens to war much too easily. In terms of authority, no less than the U.S. Constitution, the ultimate source document by which we manage our society, states clearly that Congress shall declare war. Period. There has been no constitutionally mandated declaration of war since World War II; not in Korea, Vietnam, Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan or other military engagements.

In the Korean War, we used resolutions, whether domestic, through the United Nations or among allies, to build coalitions to support policy and deploy military forces. Individual Americans have a much harder time participating in such processes than they do directly petitioning their elected senators and representatives. The presumed intent of the nation’s founders was to keep close proximity between the represented and their representatives. We citizens have had to compete with corporate and even international interests when deliberating military deployment issues, yet as individuals, we must risk body and soul if we are conscripted to serve.

Recall the hard time that President George W. Bush’s administration had convincing not only we citizens, but the international community, of the need to attack Iraq. Our credibility and his suffered irreparably. The march to that war was predicated on a manipulated illusion.

The Cold War evolved in the shadow of World War II and included open-ground warfare in Korea and Vietnam. The World War II defeat of fascism was a relatively easy case to make, as our economy and lifestyle were genuinely threatened. In the cases of Korea and Vietnam, not so much. A wary eye was kept on the spread of communism and somewhat justified actions in Korea, but in Vietnam and thereafter, much less so. Business and industrial interests seem to be the biggest beneficiaries in subsequent decades.

I served in the Vietnam War from 1966 to 1968. Less of a Cold War mindset prevailed in the United States at that time, but enough so, that the containment of communism still had traction. Vietnam was one of the few places strongly contested by both capitalist and communist interests, and contained the potential for deployment of American military forces. Only after the declassification of dozens of secret documents did we learn — way too late — that the Gulf of Tonkin incident, clouded in confusion, was manipulated to be President Lyndon B. Johnson’s trigger to deploy American forces to ground combat in Vietnam.

Eventually, we spent more than 58,000 lives and five times that many maimed and wounded, in a failure to contain communist expansion. After his body count budgeting debacle, decades later, we received an apology from the late former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, little comfort for the thousands of American families who suffered staggering losses of loved ones.

The Vietnam War foisted on this nation the dynamics of political unrest, citizen disillusionment, distrust of government, racial and class inequities in conscription, and unspeakable impacts on a generation of its youth. The Vietnam War cultivated widespread public protest and street violence. That part of the legacy of Vietnam has cast its shadow and influenced political dissent to this day; protest, and violence across a wider spectrum than just anti-war activities.

Our nation has taken its citizens to war much too easily. Actually protecting the country is one thing, but engaging in less needful foreign military commitments is another. While the warfare industry is a significant element of our economy, and a necessary element of society, its interests in the extreme must fall in behind the interests of American families who face the greatest potential impacts from the discretionary use of military power.

Tim Benintendi lives in Anchorage, is retired, and is a two-tour veteran of the Vietnam War. He participated in the original development and later renovation of the Anchorage Veterans' Memorial at Delaney Park.

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