In the Body of a Soldier

“Why do the American people tolerate this?” asked Donahue, referring both to the broken system of care for returning veterans and to the continued devastation the war is causing to families like Young’s and the U.S. military.

But, said Young, “The majority of families don’t feel the sting or sacrifice” for this war. “Until they do feel that sting, we will not have a strong enough groundswell to stop it.”

In the Body of a Soldier

April 3, 2008

Twenty-two year-old Tomas Young called his Army recruiter on September 13, 2001. He wanted to go to Afghanistan to fight the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Instead, his unit was sent to Iraq in March 2004. Less than a week after arriving, Young suffered a shot to the collarbone that left him paralyzed from the chest down.

While Young was recovering at Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington DC, he met former talk-show host Phil Donahue. “I didn’t know then that I was going to make a movie,” Donahue said last night at a Reel Progress screening of the film. But upon hearing Young’s story, he wanted to show the human costs of war to a larger audience.

Donahue had never made a movie, so he partnered with documentary filmmaker Ellen Spiro. The resulting film, “Body of War,” follows Young from his 2005 wedding, through his daily struggles with physical disability, to his involvement in Iraq Veterans Against the War, all set against the backdrop of the 2002 congressional debate over whether to authorize the president to use military force in Iraq. The past year has seen a glut of films about the Iraq conflict, but none so pointedly from the perspective of a returned soldier.

Young cannot cough, nor can he control his bowel movements or body temperature. He has to wear a vest packed with ice when in warm environments. When Young tells Bobby Muller, a similarly paralyzed Vietnam veteran and president of Veterans for America, that he was only in the hospital for two or three months after his injury, Muller is shocked at the VA’s impetuousness.


go here for the rest

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2008/04/body_of_soldier.html

Young is absolutely correct. Admittedly I would among those who would be disconnected from what is happening. I wouldn't be spending 12 hours a day doing this. I would be concerned with making a good living back in Massachusetts, going shopping and for walks in the woods with my dog. I would be spending time reading books instead of online news reports and blogs. I would be watching Life Time channel instead of news stations. I would be listening to music online playing games to take the stress of everyday living off my shoulders. I would be doing anything but what I'm doing if I didn't meet a Vietnam Veteran over half my lifetime ago. As the saying goes, I have skin in this game. I have a personal interest in the troops, in the wounded and in the families, especially the families dealing with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. To me this is all personal because I've walked in their shoes.

What does it take to get a nation to care about those who serve it? I mean for real, when it matters to those who serve instead of just taking one political position or another? What does it take to motivate them to want to do something about what is going on or to at least reach a point in their lives when they pay attention. It's appalling so few know how many deaths have occurred in Iraq and especially in Afghanistan. As of today, the count is 4,013 in Iraq with at least six deaths not counted according to ICasualties.org and in Afghanistan there have been 491. We don't talk about Afghanistan and the media won't touch it unless something catastrophic happens.

Ilona Meagher wrote a book Moving A Nation To Care. It was a fantastic book, but I often wonder how many books would have been sold if the nation had already really cared. Would the book have been necessary at all? In a perfect world, everyone would be involved. The media would be all over both occupations and fit in reports on a daily basis, but they've been far too busy reporting celebrity shenanigans and over a year covering the chosen running of the presidency. In a perfect world we would be sacrificing back home and buying war bonds instead of the latest gadget out of Best Buy. We wouldn't be talking about tax cuts for the wealthy either because that would not have even been considered during a time when we have men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan risking their lives. In a perfect world, no wounded veteran would ever have to lift a finger to have their claim honored by a truly grateful nation because people would be ready and waiting to take care of them instead of standing in their way on Capitol Hill and you know exactly whom I'm referring to.

I've been racking my brains trying to figure out how it is possible that so many in this nation will take to the streets to protest the occupation of Iraq, or to support it going on, yet there have been so few pressuring Congress to do something about any of this. I've been wondering what could get me involved if I had no personal interest in this? The answer is clear. It's information. Being informed, seeing the price the families are paying and the toll it is taking on those who are on yet another deployment. Too many in this country have no idea and they are not apt to search for information unless they already care to learn. It has to be the media, the 24 hour stations paying an interest before any of this will happen.

With Iraq taking a back seat to the economy, yet blamed on the bad economy and the devastation across the country of resources, more attention should be on Iraq. It's not that people don't care but when they think they have their own problems in their lives, it's hard to think of others unless someone reminds them.

My blog is about the wounds they have especially Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, yet the largest hit count I ever received was on the YouTube video of the reported Marine doing a puppy toss over a cliff. That astounded me! People were more informed about this video than the men and women who died that week while deployed or how many had committed suicide. You cannot find a video on YouTube unless you really search for it. If enough people search for it, it becomes front and center and it gets more hits. That's a very troubling sign because videos like mine hardly get any, yet the news reports on PTSD are all over the Internet.

What happened to the days when the stations like CNN and MSNBC were doing specials on Iraq and Afghanistan? Body of War is getting attention now because it's important but is it important enough to the rest of the nation when they are not already motivated to watch it? Will there be more specials because of it? PBS is showing Bad Voodoo and I wonder how many are watching it and learning from it, at least enough to do something?

But, said Young, “The majority of families don’t feel the sting or sacrifice” for this war. “Until they do feel that sting, we will not have a strong enough groundswell to stop it.”

It would be great if they at least made sure the wounded were taken care of. Isn't that the least we owe them? The question is, how do we get there from here?

Chaplain Kathie Costos
Namguardianangel@aol.com
www.Namguardianangel.org
www.Namguardianangel.blogspot.com
www.Woundedtimes.blogspot.com
"The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, shall be directly proportional to how they perceive veterans of early wars were treated and appreciated by our nation." - George Washington