The XX Factor: What women really think.

In Honor of My Dad—and All Other Veterans

My dad, who died one year and five days ago, was a Korean War vet; he volunteered for the Navy at 16, lying about his age. It was not something he ever mentioned. He once told me that talking about war inevitably glorifies it, and that he refused to do. But he always carefully displayed the flag on days that honored the nation—Fourth of July, Memorial Day, Veterans Day, and, of course, Inauguration Day (even for Richard Nixon, whom he loathed). 

While he was dying, brutally and painfully and slowly, of bladder cancer, a consequence of the nicotine addiction he had kicked more than 30 years before (lungs recover from smoking but not the bladder—who knew?), we spent a lot of time just sitting around together in front of the TV. That’s when I found out that, every day, my father made sure that we listened in silence when names of the American soldiers who had died in Iraq were read aloud. If we missed it on TV, he himself would read it aloud from the paper. He hated the Iraq war, believing it was wasteful and destructive, both of their (the Iraqis’) country and of ours; he despised Bush for getting us into it, and for many other things. But we had to stop in quiet respect for those who had lost their lives in their country’s employ. 

After he died, my stepmother pulled out a box of his medals—maybe a dozen, carefully displayed under glass. My three sibs and I were shocked. We had been given no hint that these existed. He wouldn’t tell her what some of them were for. We tried looking them up on the Web. Maybe he’d been downed in a top-secret mission behind North Korean lines. Or maybe he just wouldn’t talk about those medals lest doing so would glorify war.

I Like Veterans as Much as the Next Girl. But.

OK, I think I heard John McCain say, in his debate with Obama, that a) he was going to be voting for the $700 billion recovery plan ("Sure." Well, really, who knew?), and b) that if elected president, he would cope with the resulting budget squeeze by having "a spending freeze on everything but defense, veteran affairs and entitlement programs."

Lots could be said about this. (Obama: "The problem with a spending freeze is you're using a hatchet where you need a scalpel.") But what's bugging me is the notion that there is Only One Truly Special Group of People in the Country—only one group worthy of specifically exempting from an across-the-board spending freeze—and that's veterans. Naturally.

Don't get me wrong, veterans have put up with danger, hardship, and a great deal of general bureaucratic idiocy on behalf of our often muddle-headed country and deserve to have this muddle-headed country treat them with respect and concern. Overhauling and improving health, mental health, and educational benefits for veterans should be a national priority. But in a time of economic and foreign-policy crisis, should it be the only priority, aside from defense spending and maintaining entitlement programs? Really, John? Are programs that benefit veterans clearly more important than infant and child health programs? Than programs to prevent the further spread of HIV/AIDS? Than investments in critical infrastructure? Than increasing port security? Than early childhood education? Than improving first-responder capacity? Really?

I don't think McCain really believes that, but sacrilization of "our troops," and by extension, all veterans, has become standard in American civic religion. Beats blaming the troops for the mistakes and bad acts of their civilian commander in chief, no question—but it's not a particularly healthy state of affairs, either.