Stop Saying Thank You for Your Service

Why should we stop saying, “Thank you for your service” to active/retired military and veterans? And what new sentence can we learn to say that is more honest than “Thank you for your service”?

Are you devastated by the messiness and chaos you saw during the Afghanistan evacuation?

Take a moment to think of those who learned it was their loved one who died in the suicide attack at Kabul. Is your broken heart overwhelmed with the darkness of that endless sucking hole?

Remembering all the other families who have sunk into that same shattering experience over the past twenty years, are you tempted to despair?

Realizing that trillions of dollars were spent on this failed war, are you stunned and angered by such waste?

As of April 2021, more than 71000 Afghan and Pakistani civilian deaths were a direct result of the war; do the words, war’s collateral damage, ease the horror of innocent deaths? Does your heart wonder how many of these were children?

In addition, often overlooked consequences of war include mental illness, physical mutilations, destroyed marriages and suicides. Currently, military suicides are at an all-time high and have been increasing at an alarming rate over the past five years.  Research in 2021 reports that suicides by active duty military and veterans who served since 9/11 amounted to 30177 while 7057 were killed in combat during the same twenty years.

Confronting Truth

No one can deny the divisions, hatred, prejudice, partisanship and violence that daily demonstrate the broken democracy in our country. How, then, do we dare consider ever again a goal of nation-building in any other country on earth?

War is a horror. War fails to bring peace. War does not secure our freedom. War is never the right answer. We heard far too many arm-chair experts criticize the chaos, flaws and shortcomings marking the Afghanistan evacuation ending the war.  No organized, orderly, satisfying exit is ever possible from a failed war.

Changing Our Perspective

Saying thank you and calling soldiers heroes makes the speaker/narrator/reporter feel good. But that mistaken conviction builds a wall that precludes us from hearing the truth. How can a hero tell us how frightened he/she was? How do heroes admit their questions, doubts, or guilt? How will we understand the trauma of war if we do not allow the participants to tell us their truth?

And so we offer an answer to the question posed at the beginning of this article.  Rather than “thank you,” let us allow ourselves to admit the truth that war is a failure and an appalling waste. Let us learn to say, “Forgive us.” For our continuing willingness to sacrifice husbands and wives, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, forgive us. Because we did not learn the lessons of war, forgive us. For our arrogance and abuse of power on the world stage, forgive us.  While refusing to do the difficult work of diplomacy and peace, and for justifying revenge and retaliation to satisfy our emotional needs, forgive us. To all who serve and  have served, we acknowledge your dedication to country and our impaired vision of God’s will for our world. Forgive us!