The man who owns the garage where my car is doctored is the father of a soldier who recently returned from a tour in Iraq. “Now the healing begins,” the father told me.
This father has held his breath for a year aware that every ring of the phone (and his garage is popular, so the phone rings often) might be the call that will rip his heart out. And now, even with his son on American soil (temporarily, anyway), the dad continues to hold his breath given the internal challenges his boy is likely to face. It’s no secret that the suicide rate among combat soldiers in Iraq is disturbingly high. Whatever the reasons for that statistic, I’m sure they contribute to complicating many a returning soldier’s reentry to so-called “normal life.”The story of this dad and his son couldn’t be more commonplace (although it certainly doesn’t feel that way to those involved): soldiers in war zones living amidst the kind of insanity that eats the soul, while their loved ones are given lessons in helplessness they had hoped they might never experience.
Against this backdrop of national heartache stands a symbol that, to me, aggravates as much as it may heal the wounds of war. I’m speaking of the slogan “Support Our Troops.”
Years ago in an Oklahoma airport near Fort Sill, I noticed a young man wearing a baseball cap with the phrase “Nuke ’em till they glow” printed where the team logo usually rides. Without getting into the merits of the sentiment, I think its meaning is pretty clear. Sadly, the same cannot be said about “Support Our Troops.”
Beyond being a call to action that hardly anyone could argue with (along side “Support Our Children” and “Support Our Schools”), “Support Our Troops” is a phrase so empty of explicit meaning that it cannot represent a clear, collective commitment. If we delve an inch under the surface, does the “Support Our Troops” decal on your car mean the same as the one on mine? I wouldn’t bet a day’s pay that it does. To some, supporting our troops means approving the use of American military force to further democracy around the world. To others, supporting our troops means bringing them home from this present engagement in Iraq while they’re still alive—as in, immediately. And to be sure there are a host of other possible interpretations in between, including a simple non-political offering of love.
History suggests that one essential quality for the long-term health of an institution is clarity of values and purpose. For sustained vitality, it matters less what the specific values are, or what the purpose is, than it does having clarity on them. “Support Our Troops” does not meet this test of clarity and therefore is symptomatic of an institution—a nation—severely challenged to sustain itself with dignity.
Imagine if “Support Our Troops” were the banner for a national dialogue where each of us were encouraged to explore and discuss what the phrase meant to us. Sure it would trigger some intense debate, but since when does keeping ourselves closed to the views of others grow understanding? The strength of America is its diversity. The Achilles Heel of America is the inability to make room for differences. If there is a single reason why our nation is becoming an increasingly polarized culture it is that we don’t talk with one another enough. We don’t ask the simplest of questions: What does this mean to you? Imagine spending as much time focused on what unites us as we do on what separates us.
If “Support Our Troops” were the catalyst for such a conversation, I believe that our collective sense of values and purpose would become clearer in at least one important way: our common desire that every American soldier be given the best opportunity to survive his or her military service with the rest of their life full of possibility before them.
And if that’s what we wish for our soldiers, why wouldn’t we wish the same for the soldiers of any nation—even those we feel obliged to kill? Maybe someday the sign will read “Support All Troops.”
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