Please don't thank me for my "service." I was in the military, not the "Service." Service is doing something good. Service is what the person does who fixes your car. When the word "service" is applied to the military, it helps to justify violence as a method for conflict resolution. Like "defending our freedom," or "bringing democracy," the word "service" is used to lower the barriers of aggression. The military solution to conflict is death and destruction. That's not "service." Call it what it is - the military. If you have to hurt someone to solve a problem, you are the Problem. -- Arnold Stieber, US Army Veteran, 1970
When you write a column like this one, it makes me thankful that I stumbled across you and am a paid subscriber. Every quote from Eisenhower seems so fresh, I wonder how he came to seem so bland to me over the decades from 1950 on...Thanks, again! ❤️🤍💙
unless I'm wildly mistaken, recent history I've read seems to tip in the direction of agreeing that Ike's "blandness" and, most especially, the circumlocutions for which he became so well known were quite deliberate. and I agree that we remember that time as being a golden one for middle class folks for all kinds of reasons quite apart from who the president was. but the horrifying shit that was going on behind the scenes (FBI, CIA, NSA, god knows what else) is also very much a product of the same period.
and after the Brown decision, when all the tsouris started, Ike said more than once that his biggest mistake was appointing "that son of a bitch Earl Warren."
lest anyone be offended by my skepticism, remember that I grew up in a family which never quite recovered from the trauma of Stevenson's loss in '52.
during the "Bad War," ending the draft looked like some kind of real solution. but this all-volunteer thing has made these "little wars" that last for decades altogether too remote for those of us with no skin in the game.
I remember how, in the fifties and early sixties, there was a general understanding that after college, guys got drafted and doing those two years was no big deal. some of them even got lucky and were sent to some wonderful locations. but then we start seeing stuff about Indochina, then "advisors" in what they were calling "Vietnam" (I'm trying to recapture the "innocence" of those days for people my age).
I've said this before, but I think National Service can be a very good thing as long as there are non-military options.
and if the truth be known, even at the height of Vietnam, everybody I know found some way NOT to serve. I don't think I met a Vietnam vet until I was well out of college.
My son joined the army in 2000, thinking he was going to "Be all that you can be!" I hated that he joined; I was scared to death he would die. He retired 20 years later during Covid after he decided he was tired of military life. Being SF for 15 years wears out a person's body. I never imagined in my teenage and college years that my kid would be an instrument of foreign policy. I have always thought that "thank you for your service" were cheap words from people who would never sign up themselves.
You often find this on the right, celebrating the "warrior" culture - I suspect most people who do it now are doing it out of some sense that it's appropriate to do it and perhaps not appropriate not to do it..... We should be suspicious of any culture that worships the military - there's a word for political movements like that.....
yeah, it's always felt so performative; it's almost as if the real message was "I sure am glad you're neither as chickenshit nor as economically advantaged as I am." another thing that bugs me is the phrase I keep hearing on TV that wherever we have troops, "they're fighting for OUR freedom."
uhhhh......REALLY??
I'm not even disputing the fact that some of our foreign adventures might have had some positive effects for some of the people in some of those countries. I'm disputing the idea that OUR freedom was somehow at stake.
but I also feel that talking about the military is something I have no business doing because of my lifelong distance from it.
I have long thought that we need a National Service for probably 18 year-olds, two years. There would be choices--military or needed domestic programs a la Job Corps to Peace Corps to things like tutoring failing students or registering voters. No college till you served (or if you were a genius able to enter college at 15, a hiatus when you hit 18), nor any job OTHER than your service during that time. Programs for high school drop-outs (one of the places the Tutor Corps could work. Education in ALL programs in basic civics.
Food and lodging paid for, training paid for, small stipend. The kicker would be that IF we ventured on something like Vietnam, you could be transferred to the Military if Congress so decreed--that level of uncertainty that caused the AWARENESS of the young to the issues of Vietnam.
My then husband was in grad school but was 1A because a snafu in his undergraduate records. He was never drafted--and ended up with a "good" lottery number--but there were two years of fretful wondering. And a constant examination of WHY we were fighting there. He turned quite conservative in later years, but never in a militaristic way.
The logistics of this would be horrible. Labor unions would object to the "competition." It will never happen, though plenty of countries have a similar structure in place. The basic aim would be a MIXING of kids from all socio-economic statuses and races and family political beliefs, since it has been shown that when people actually KNOW others of a group they dislike, the dislike diminishes.
Just such a program called the Franklin Project was championed by the general Obama fired, Stan McChrystal. The guy even aired some PSAs for it, but it has not yet developed much support, probably for the reasons you cite. Still, a couple of years of public service would help young people in many ways, especially if it earned them something for higher education. Unions and the GI Bill helped build the middle class, and such a boost in life experience could save the dwindling middle class.
If I hadn't gone in the Navy I would never have gone to college. Seeing how the people with and without college degees were treated (officers and enlisted, respectively) I decided I did want further schooling, but only what I wanted to study.
My Dad's first job out of college was with the CCC. It was 1933. It had a HUGE impact on his life. As I said, it would be aimed at not only getting kids from the inner city and from apartments on Central Park to have skin in the game of our democracy, but it would put them in contact with each other in a context where they would at the least be constrained from offing each other. I envision the non-military structures to be like the military in the division of kids into platoons or squads, to keep it all from being too amorphous and clicque-y.
It could start on a smaller scale, with colleges requiring service before allowing kids to enroll. Same for apprenticeship programs in the trades. But that is a pipe-dream, too.
it's almost uncanny the extent to which your talking about rich kids mixing with poor kids mirrors the founding principle of CUNY, which is where I received ALL of my excellent-but-probably-too-abundant education. CCNY's founder, Townsend Harris (who was actually played by John Wayne in a best-forgotten John Huston movie), very specifically talked about the desirability of "the rich taking their seats with the poor," assuming both met the admission criteria. when I taught there, I became friendly with a colleague who'd attended with my father. he was heir to a substantial fortune his grandfather had made in the garment center (after which, needless to say, he multiplied that fortune by investing in Manhattan real estate). I asked him why he'd gone to CCNY, and his answer was "it's my FAMILY school and a fucking good one." my answer was the same and the joke I told people was "I was such a Legacy Admission they gave me a full scholarship."
that CUNY existed from 1847 through most of the 1970s as a free tuition institution is about the best rejoinder I can think of to putzes like Bill Maher who dismiss the idea of free tuition as some kind of Radical Left Pipe Dream. of course, the main proponent of this wild-eyed Bolshevism is Bernie Sanders, a proud Brooklyn College alumnus.
yes yes yes yes yes. my feelings precisely. the difference is, you've thought it through a hell of a lot more than I have.
I especially like your idea of making basic Civics education an essential part of this. it certainly solves the problem we have with schools dropping that particular (and huge) ball.
once again, it bears repeating that I don't know anybody who regarded their military experience as one of the most wonderful experiences of their lives, whereas EVERYBODY I know who served in Vista or the Peace Corps feel exactly that way.
Well Tom. this is the one holiday that I stop and think. About my father. My friends who returned from Viet Nam, only to blow their own brains out for doing what they did and could not face what they would never talk about. My dear friend Randy, who had so much love in his heart that it carried him on, passed last year from the heart failure that the chain smoking did to him. He never spoke about it and we never dared ask. This is a day that I shed tears for the pain and loss of those did not have to do what they did, but were coerced by many outside forces, to go and do and live as long a they could with it. Some longer than others. Tears will be there off and on all day. I always called Randy to tell him to have a happy Veteran's Day. He always thanked me. He was happy to be alive.
Thinking of what would make a really great billboard - that quote fits! I knew of his remarks regarding the military complex. But this one, TC , sure would make people have to actually think about it - maybe (its a reach) even comprehend the meaning.
Does anyone here question why our young men and women (even older ones) have so many many health and mental issues after they have been run thru that gauntlet? I dont. My question is why the hell doesnt the American public pull their heads out of wherever & realize there must be the necessary care and followup? Enough realization to call, write, email, twit, facebook etc etc to make a big freaking deal about it?
The idea that a tv personality - Jon Stewart - was the deciding push to pass not just one law (Past?Act) but to get the first responders from 911 THEIR deserved assistance! Apparently our sainted political "representatives" werent all that interested - why isnt the public?
One of my favorite Ike quotes. He knew of what he spoke. Another man who knew of what he spoke, Harry Patch, last surviving soldier of WW1. “I felt then, as I feel now, that the politicians who took us to war should have been given the guns and told to settle their differences themselves, instead of organizing nothing better than legalized mass murder.” I agree Harry
My spouse preferred " Welcome home" which is how his veterans group (C2/12) greeted each other. I didn't meet him until he had been back 3+ years (he was drafted in Dec 65, in country 66-67). I thought I would remember more of his history, but I have forgotten a lot over the last 10 years.
I have a collection of Navajo sand paintings. One of my favorites is titled “Slayer of the Alien Gods”. It is a non sacred version of the painting created for a ceremony welcoming a returning warrior, “slaying” all the negative experiences and bringing the warrior into harmony and balance with the tribe. Anglos could learn a lot from the Native cultures.
My father volunteered for the Army during WWII when he was 17, in late 1943. When he came home after the war, he returned with his medals in his pocket, not on his chest. He had spent the war in the Pacific, on battlefield cleanup duty, coming onto beaches a few days following a battle to pickup and bag the fellows, or portions thereof, who lost their lives. That experience, plus getting shot through the ass by one of his own (the guy mistakenly thought he had stumbled onto a Japanese patrol), and watching that guy go crazy because of it, plus getting exposed to the racism rampant in the ranks, soured him on war forever. He never talked about his experiences much and certainly didn’t want to be reminded of them. He passed away before the “thank you for your service” bit became the meaningless sentiment it is today, like flag pins on politicians. I’m sure he would have preferred not to be thanked for going through hell. I know he preferred to keep his hell private. I didn’t even know he had been awarded a Bronze Star until after he died.
A story one doesn't hear, but of course such units would have to exist. And given the way the American military was organized then, it's not hard at all to figure out who got assigned such awful duty. He obviously did good things after the war, since you're a good advertisement for them.
As not to leave false impressions, my dad was white. He was just unlucky.
The racism is something he witnessed, not experienced. The callous treatment he saw his officers and fellow GIs meet out to Black Americans, whether in uniform or civilians during basic training, disgusted him. It reminded him of the petty discriminations that the German Lutherans of Columbus, Nebraska (his hometown), inflicted on the German Roman Catholics in the German-American community there. When dad’s favorite uncle married a Sweitzer (the Protestants’ epithet for the Catholic Germans), dad’s family disowned the uncle even though he still attended the Lutheran Church every Sunday. My dad was not a fan of discrimination regardless of the basis.
when my mother-in-law married my father-in-law, who was an Italian-American Freemason (therefore, excommunicated at birth--the women were Catholic), her Orthodox Jewish family sat shiva for her. I have a few other friends whose families went through the same thing. in my mother-in-law's case, it was more or less pro forma and they communicated again after some years. but for most of those idiotic families, it stuck.
it's not racism, but it's certainly DISCRIMINATION and every bit as fucked up. and even tragic (a word I usually avoid using), given how central to people's lives their immediate families are.
those fucking flag pins make me wanna puke. talk about "performative"...but in general, any sort of flag-waving has always felt disgusting to me, and I mean going back to when I was 10 or so. I'm not even sure why I felt that way and it might be something as trivial as having to stand and drone miserably during the meaningless, even MORE performative "Pledge of Allegiance," which never quite made sense to me.
don't even get me started on our pathetic "anthem," which is deeply objectionable for altogether too many reasons, beginning with its stolen, unsingable melody.
I don't trust anyone who is eager to go to war. I also don't enjoy being thanked for my 'service' because neither war I fought in accomplished any good. We should be ashamed our political system. It's toxic.
When I was in college, some of my classmates were there on the GI Bill. They were uniformly a mess, as was anyone I’ve met since. Not a complete, living-on-the-street mess, most of them, but in some way all damaged.
Thank you thank you and thank you again for this post! I found your substack because of seeing your comments on another substack and i am really happy i did! This just reinforces my decision. ( yes, you will note that i am not a paying subscriber. Yet. I am new to the substack game.)
When you write a column like this one, it makes me thankful that I stumbled across you and am a paid subscriber. Every quote from Eisenhower seems so fresh, I wonder how he came to seem so bland to me over the decades from 1950 on...Thanks, again! ❤️🤍💙
Agreed.
Tom, I too am glad that I stumbled across you.
You just have a way about capturing the moment and making connections with things.
You are spot-on about the all-volunteer army vs the draft.
I had a temp job in the summer on a missile base in the states when I was 16.
I got to know several of the returning 19 and 20-year-olds who had done tours in Vietnam.
All of them told me to do anything to stay out of going to Vietnam.
Two returning cousins in 1970 said the same; they were never the same after coming home.
I turned 18 in 1972 and Nixon ended the draft.
Tom, I took your advice and switched my yearly paid subscription plan to monthly.
Keep writing.
unless I'm wildly mistaken, recent history I've read seems to tip in the direction of agreeing that Ike's "blandness" and, most especially, the circumlocutions for which he became so well known were quite deliberate. and I agree that we remember that time as being a golden one for middle class folks for all kinds of reasons quite apart from who the president was. but the horrifying shit that was going on behind the scenes (FBI, CIA, NSA, god knows what else) is also very much a product of the same period.
and after the Brown decision, when all the tsouris started, Ike said more than once that his biggest mistake was appointing "that son of a bitch Earl Warren."
lest anyone be offended by my skepticism, remember that I grew up in a family which never quite recovered from the trauma of Stevenson's loss in '52.
during the "Bad War," ending the draft looked like some kind of real solution. but this all-volunteer thing has made these "little wars" that last for decades altogether too remote for those of us with no skin in the game.
I remember how, in the fifties and early sixties, there was a general understanding that after college, guys got drafted and doing those two years was no big deal. some of them even got lucky and were sent to some wonderful locations. but then we start seeing stuff about Indochina, then "advisors" in what they were calling "Vietnam" (I'm trying to recapture the "innocence" of those days for people my age).
I've said this before, but I think National Service can be a very good thing as long as there are non-military options.
and if the truth be known, even at the height of Vietnam, everybody I know found some way NOT to serve. I don't think I met a Vietnam vet until I was well out of college.
For two years (1965-67), I was the only Vietnam veteran in college in Colorado.
exactly what I meant.
My son joined the army in 2000, thinking he was going to "Be all that you can be!" I hated that he joined; I was scared to death he would die. He retired 20 years later during Covid after he decided he was tired of military life. Being SF for 15 years wears out a person's body. I never imagined in my teenage and college years that my kid would be an instrument of foreign policy. I have always thought that "thank you for your service" were cheap words from people who would never sign up themselves.
My thought too.
It does sound like a guilt salute.
You often find this on the right, celebrating the "warrior" culture - I suspect most people who do it now are doing it out of some sense that it's appropriate to do it and perhaps not appropriate not to do it..... We should be suspicious of any culture that worships the military - there's a word for political movements like that.....
yeah, it's always felt so performative; it's almost as if the real message was "I sure am glad you're neither as chickenshit nor as economically advantaged as I am." another thing that bugs me is the phrase I keep hearing on TV that wherever we have troops, "they're fighting for OUR freedom."
uhhhh......REALLY??
I'm not even disputing the fact that some of our foreign adventures might have had some positive effects for some of the people in some of those countries. I'm disputing the idea that OUR freedom was somehow at stake.
but I also feel that talking about the military is something I have no business doing because of my lifelong distance from it.
I have long thought that we need a National Service for probably 18 year-olds, two years. There would be choices--military or needed domestic programs a la Job Corps to Peace Corps to things like tutoring failing students or registering voters. No college till you served (or if you were a genius able to enter college at 15, a hiatus when you hit 18), nor any job OTHER than your service during that time. Programs for high school drop-outs (one of the places the Tutor Corps could work. Education in ALL programs in basic civics.
Food and lodging paid for, training paid for, small stipend. The kicker would be that IF we ventured on something like Vietnam, you could be transferred to the Military if Congress so decreed--that level of uncertainty that caused the AWARENESS of the young to the issues of Vietnam.
My then husband was in grad school but was 1A because a snafu in his undergraduate records. He was never drafted--and ended up with a "good" lottery number--but there were two years of fretful wondering. And a constant examination of WHY we were fighting there. He turned quite conservative in later years, but never in a militaristic way.
The logistics of this would be horrible. Labor unions would object to the "competition." It will never happen, though plenty of countries have a similar structure in place. The basic aim would be a MIXING of kids from all socio-economic statuses and races and family political beliefs, since it has been shown that when people actually KNOW others of a group they dislike, the dislike diminishes.
Just such a program called the Franklin Project was championed by the general Obama fired, Stan McChrystal. The guy even aired some PSAs for it, but it has not yet developed much support, probably for the reasons you cite. Still, a couple of years of public service would help young people in many ways, especially if it earned them something for higher education. Unions and the GI Bill helped build the middle class, and such a boost in life experience could save the dwindling middle class.
If I hadn't gone in the Navy I would never have gone to college. Seeing how the people with and without college degees were treated (officers and enlisted, respectively) I decided I did want further schooling, but only what I wanted to study.
My Dad's first job out of college was with the CCC. It was 1933. It had a HUGE impact on his life. As I said, it would be aimed at not only getting kids from the inner city and from apartments on Central Park to have skin in the game of our democracy, but it would put them in contact with each other in a context where they would at the least be constrained from offing each other. I envision the non-military structures to be like the military in the division of kids into platoons or squads, to keep it all from being too amorphous and clicque-y.
It could start on a smaller scale, with colleges requiring service before allowing kids to enroll. Same for apprenticeship programs in the trades. But that is a pipe-dream, too.
it's almost uncanny the extent to which your talking about rich kids mixing with poor kids mirrors the founding principle of CUNY, which is where I received ALL of my excellent-but-probably-too-abundant education. CCNY's founder, Townsend Harris (who was actually played by John Wayne in a best-forgotten John Huston movie), very specifically talked about the desirability of "the rich taking their seats with the poor," assuming both met the admission criteria. when I taught there, I became friendly with a colleague who'd attended with my father. he was heir to a substantial fortune his grandfather had made in the garment center (after which, needless to say, he multiplied that fortune by investing in Manhattan real estate). I asked him why he'd gone to CCNY, and his answer was "it's my FAMILY school and a fucking good one." my answer was the same and the joke I told people was "I was such a Legacy Admission they gave me a full scholarship."
that CUNY existed from 1847 through most of the 1970s as a free tuition institution is about the best rejoinder I can think of to putzes like Bill Maher who dismiss the idea of free tuition as some kind of Radical Left Pipe Dream. of course, the main proponent of this wild-eyed Bolshevism is Bernie Sanders, a proud Brooklyn College alumnus.
yes yes yes yes yes. my feelings precisely. the difference is, you've thought it through a hell of a lot more than I have.
I especially like your idea of making basic Civics education an essential part of this. it certainly solves the problem we have with schools dropping that particular (and huge) ball.
once again, it bears repeating that I don't know anybody who regarded their military experience as one of the most wonderful experiences of their lives, whereas EVERYBODY I know who served in Vista or the Peace Corps feel exactly that way.
Well Tom. this is the one holiday that I stop and think. About my father. My friends who returned from Viet Nam, only to blow their own brains out for doing what they did and could not face what they would never talk about. My dear friend Randy, who had so much love in his heart that it carried him on, passed last year from the heart failure that the chain smoking did to him. He never spoke about it and we never dared ask. This is a day that I shed tears for the pain and loss of those did not have to do what they did, but were coerced by many outside forces, to go and do and live as long a they could with it. Some longer than others. Tears will be there off and on all day. I always called Randy to tell him to have a happy Veteran's Day. He always thanked me. He was happy to be alive.
Thinking of what would make a really great billboard - that quote fits! I knew of his remarks regarding the military complex. But this one, TC , sure would make people have to actually think about it - maybe (its a reach) even comprehend the meaning.
Does anyone here question why our young men and women (even older ones) have so many many health and mental issues after they have been run thru that gauntlet? I dont. My question is why the hell doesnt the American public pull their heads out of wherever & realize there must be the necessary care and followup? Enough realization to call, write, email, twit, facebook etc etc to make a big freaking deal about it?
The idea that a tv personality - Jon Stewart - was the deciding push to pass not just one law (Past?Act) but to get the first responders from 911 THEIR deserved assistance! Apparently our sainted political "representatives" werent all that interested - why isnt the public?
ABSOLUTELY!
I didn’t join the military so right-wing traitors could use the moment to massage THEIR self-righteous egos at my expense.
One of my favorite Ike quotes. He knew of what he spoke. Another man who knew of what he spoke, Harry Patch, last surviving soldier of WW1. “I felt then, as I feel now, that the politicians who took us to war should have been given the guns and told to settle their differences themselves, instead of organizing nothing better than legalized mass murder.” I agree Harry
After I’d been sober long enough to believe I killed people, friends began to thank me for my service.
I thanked them (still do) and thought WTF, (still do). Thank you for your history. It alway feels like freedom.
Welcome home, Alec.
Thanks Bro. You too.
My spouse preferred " Welcome home" which is how his veterans group (C2/12) greeted each other. I didn't meet him until he had been back 3+ years (he was drafted in Dec 65, in country 66-67). I thought I would remember more of his history, but I have forgotten a lot over the last 10 years.
Perfect! Totally agree about the draft (well, really, all of it). Happy Armistice Day!
I have a collection of Navajo sand paintings. One of my favorites is titled “Slayer of the Alien Gods”. It is a non sacred version of the painting created for a ceremony welcoming a returning warrior, “slaying” all the negative experiences and bringing the warrior into harmony and balance with the tribe. Anglos could learn a lot from the Native cultures.
Yes, particularly that one.
Not sure how this will be taken but here goes.
My father volunteered for the Army during WWII when he was 17, in late 1943. When he came home after the war, he returned with his medals in his pocket, not on his chest. He had spent the war in the Pacific, on battlefield cleanup duty, coming onto beaches a few days following a battle to pickup and bag the fellows, or portions thereof, who lost their lives. That experience, plus getting shot through the ass by one of his own (the guy mistakenly thought he had stumbled onto a Japanese patrol), and watching that guy go crazy because of it, plus getting exposed to the racism rampant in the ranks, soured him on war forever. He never talked about his experiences much and certainly didn’t want to be reminded of them. He passed away before the “thank you for your service” bit became the meaningless sentiment it is today, like flag pins on politicians. I’m sure he would have preferred not to be thanked for going through hell. I know he preferred to keep his hell private. I didn’t even know he had been awarded a Bronze Star until after he died.
A story one doesn't hear, but of course such units would have to exist. And given the way the American military was organized then, it's not hard at all to figure out who got assigned such awful duty. He obviously did good things after the war, since you're a good advertisement for them.
As not to leave false impressions, my dad was white. He was just unlucky.
The racism is something he witnessed, not experienced. The callous treatment he saw his officers and fellow GIs meet out to Black Americans, whether in uniform or civilians during basic training, disgusted him. It reminded him of the petty discriminations that the German Lutherans of Columbus, Nebraska (his hometown), inflicted on the German Roman Catholics in the German-American community there. When dad’s favorite uncle married a Sweitzer (the Protestants’ epithet for the Catholic Germans), dad’s family disowned the uncle even though he still attended the Lutheran Church every Sunday. My dad was not a fan of discrimination regardless of the basis.
when my mother-in-law married my father-in-law, who was an Italian-American Freemason (therefore, excommunicated at birth--the women were Catholic), her Orthodox Jewish family sat shiva for her. I have a few other friends whose families went through the same thing. in my mother-in-law's case, it was more or less pro forma and they communicated again after some years. but for most of those idiotic families, it stuck.
it's not racism, but it's certainly DISCRIMINATION and every bit as fucked up. and even tragic (a word I usually avoid using), given how central to people's lives their immediate families are.
those fucking flag pins make me wanna puke. talk about "performative"...but in general, any sort of flag-waving has always felt disgusting to me, and I mean going back to when I was 10 or so. I'm not even sure why I felt that way and it might be something as trivial as having to stand and drone miserably during the meaningless, even MORE performative "Pledge of Allegiance," which never quite made sense to me.
don't even get me started on our pathetic "anthem," which is deeply objectionable for altogether too many reasons, beginning with its stolen, unsingable melody.
Agreed!
I don't trust anyone who is eager to go to war. I also don't enjoy being thanked for my 'service' because neither war I fought in accomplished any good. We should be ashamed our political system. It's toxic.
When I was in college, some of my classmates were there on the GI Bill. They were uniformly a mess, as was anyone I’ve met since. Not a complete, living-on-the-street mess, most of them, but in some way all damaged.
Thank you for this. This is your true “service”.
Very thoughtful
Thank you thank you and thank you again for this post! I found your substack because of seeing your comments on another substack and i am really happy i did! This just reinforces my decision. ( yes, you will note that i am not a paying subscriber. Yet. I am new to the substack game.)
Beautifully said, TC.