All Those Young Faces...

 I went in search of nostalgia when I made my way from my house to the local 4th of July  parade on Wednesday.  Coeur D' Alene, Idaho, my home for the past four years, now sports a population topping fifty-thousand but is still a small town in many ways.  We all know our neighbors, say "good morning" to people we meet on an early walk, pitch in to support local charities, all essential  elements of small town life .  In many ways it's reminiscent of the tiny Midwestern towns I called home in the 1950's and 60's.  

The parade route was packed with young and old alike and the weather was a perfect 72 degrees with clear skies, a welcome respite from what has been a too chilly Spring and early Summer.  Fire trucks, scouts, the VFW and the American Legion were well represented and it was good to see that there was at least one World War II vet still around to be honored.  The audience applauded and cheered the marchers, most now long past squeezing into uniforms that fit combat versions of themselves.  The crowd was there to celebrate being alive, free and living in a country blessed like no other.

 Then it happened.  Coming down the street six or seven abreast I saw what appeared to be marchers with placards nearly as large as they were.  At first it was impossible to see what message they bore but soon it hit me.  Each held a large picture of either a young man or woman in uniform with the dates of their births and subsequent deaths.  In every case the date of death was recorded in this new century.  Bright young faces normally looking forward to families, careers, and all the good stuff of life passed before me baring  2013, 2016,  even 2018 as the date the dream stopped.  There seemed to be so many, though I didn't count.  One small city and all of those names.  I began to multiply it by all the other cities and towns and felt ashamed that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq had largely fallen off my radar.  It was surprising and disappointing.

As I walked home those faces filled my mind with questions.  The war of my era, Vietnam, was front and center in the daily news cycle.  The front page of most major papers had at least one or two stories with a Southeast Asia dateline and a continuing tally of casualties and fatalities often led television's evening newscasts.  In twenty years (1955-75) our country lost 58,220 young men and women only to find ourselves in 2018 still arguing over what exactly the mission was and where we went wrong.  One thing certain, most all of us were paying attention and were more than a little concerned about the loss of all those lives.  Was it because so many were draftees instead of volunteers?

I am embarrassed to admit that before seeing this assembly of way too many youthful faces now gone forever I had given little, if any, thought to the war in Afghanistan.  Why is that?  Why has the press ceased to provide full coverage of a war to which we have now given nearly 2000 young lives  and seventeen years of our time?   According to information I found on the net, the United States still has 14,000 troops in that dismal sand trap and our expenditures thus far stand at nearly three trillion dollars.  THREE TRILLION!  That's not counting the dollars spent in Iraq where we lost close to 5000 troops and still maintain a military presence.  I'm no dove and have always believed in a strong defense but at some point we have to wonder if slowly losing some of our best and brightest to a war so few of us appear to understand or care about should continue unexamined.  Maybe it's time to starting asking some questions of our politicians and the media.
Why so long?  What is the mission? How much longer will it last and at what expense?  Why is there so little news coverage?

Let's start asking for the kids who no longer can.

"A veteran is someone who, at one point, wrote a blank check made payable to the United States of America for an amount up to and including their life."