Recently, on the forum, the topic has come up of investigations to determine whether three recent casualties died as a result of enemy action or friendly fire. In my experience, people who have never served in the military at all are of the opinion that friendly fire is the rare mistake, a tragedy of uncommon occurrence. Military veterans, on the contrary, think it happens entirely too often and are not surprised to hear about it. Noise, smoke, confusion, fear, masses of people (sometimes similarly uniformed even) milling about, running, shooting, throwing exploding stuff…how could it NOT happen?

So, then the question is, does the military always really investigate every death and report accurately. Everyone has heard the Pat Tillman story, and all the accusations of deception and cover-up. Is every cover-up actually meant that way? Is it wrong if a parent is told their son or daughter died in a firefight, and little more? Is it worse to believe the enemy killed your child, or to think they died at the hands of their own side? The Tillmans obviously thought it worse to be lied to and were angry that incompetent behavior led to their son’s death.

I would rather think my son died in action because an enemy bullet found him, than to think a screw up in American military procedure took him down. But I do not want to be lied to, either. I’d like to think if I lost my son to friendly fire, the appropriate asses would be appropriately chewed and some changes made. I’d prefer to think of an enemy being the killer, because I don’t want the mental image of a young American sitting up nights dealing with guilt over killing a brother soldier by mistake.

The sad truth is, training and good communications can lessen the chance of death at the hands of your comrades in arms, but not eliminate it. The sad truth is, war is NOT a surgical strike like CNN and other news agencies like to paint it—not on our side OR theirs. The sad truth is at war accidents of ALL kinds are more likely; people are tired, stressed and in various not-quite normal emotional states, these make accidents more likely. A lot of the deaths of this war have been not gunshot, bomb (IED, etc) or munition related but auto accidents, falls, drownings, even illness. Anyone with an interest in the history of war knows that ancient armies lost more casualties to disease than to battle. Starvation even dogged armies of old, this is why war was once a seasonal blood-sport; you had to have food and it wasn’t THERE certain times of the year.

My personal feeling is that now, having triumphed in large part over the kinds of disease that once laid armies out flat, and having all kinds of supply options and much better communications than pennons in the wind and bugle calls, we do see more deaths that fit the mental-movie-American vision of what a war death looks like. But here is the thing, war is also much more financially costly now. It is rapidly becoming apparent to anyone that looks closely that NOBODY can really afford war.

Reagan didn’t beat the Reds into whatever-in-progress system of government they are exploring now, military spending did. Our economy is not being crushed by the fall in the housing market, but by the fact that the government is squandering the state treasury on a war it has no winning strategy for–and worse, one that isn’t going to provide “plunder” to pay for itself.

And when you look at it from that perspective, it pretty much ALL becomes a stupid haze of war. I don’t want to sacrifice my son to that at all. Not in a war that has jack to do with the much vaunted American freedoms, and more to do with who controls and profits from natural resources. Because, since the war can’t pay for the very costly development of those resources for American oil companies and their subsidiaries, guess who will be paying the piper? In blood AND money.

And edited to add a musical lyric memory that seems applicable….since I am indulging in nostalgia and melancholia today:

One Tin Soldier

Listen children to a story
That was written long ago
‘Bout a kingdom, on a mountain
And the valley folk below
On the mountain was a treasure
Buried deep beneath a stone
And the valley people swore
They’d have it for their very own

Go ahead and hate your neighbor
Go ahead and cheat a friend
Do it in the name of Heaven
You can justify it in the end
There wont be any trumpets blowing
Come the judgment day
On the bloody morning after …
One tin soldier rides away

So the people of the valley
Sent a message up the hill
Asking for the buried treasure
Tons of gold* for which they’d kill (*barrels of oil?)
Came an answer from the kingdom
With our brothers we will share
All the secrets of our mountain
And all the riches buried there

Now the valley cried in anger
Mount your horses
Draw your swords
And they killed the mountain people
So they won their just reward
Now they stood beside the treasure
On the mountain dark and red
Turn the stone and which beneath it
“Peace on Earth”
Was all it said

Go ahead and hate your neighbor
Go ahead and cheat a friend
Do it in the name of Heaven
You can justify it in the end
There wont be any trumpets blowing
Come the judgment day
On the bloody morning after …
One tin soldier rides away