Dear editor:
Cassie Craven's newest opinion piece seeks to co-opt the experience of dead veterans in a reprehensible way.
Maybe I'm worn a little thin about this type of patronizing exercise because Frontier Days is about to start and I will again be tolerating thousands of middle-aged rodeo enthusiasts, who were military-aged during the entire forever war on terror, wistfully singing along to Lee Greenwood about how ready they were to stand up next to me and my brothers and sisters in uniform to defend the country.
I mean, most of them, like Greenwood himself, chose not to ... but boy, today they are they ready.
Maybe I'm also ragged from the current administration's attempts to use the military as a set piece in political theater, deploying troops to liberal cities to sit on their hands, needlessly removed from combat readiness and their families, arbitrarily re-changing base names, and taking away thousands of soldiers' 96 hours of liberty over the Army's birthday to make them participate in a parade.
But to say you are kicking dirt on the graves of dead soldiers if you criticize the government's treatment of people or have sincere concerns about where the country is headed .... much less about a new war? Come on.
None of us have a license to speak for troops, dead or alive ... but at least this veteran will tell you that questioning and demanding accountability for the actions (and words) of the government and commander-in-chief is a fundamentally patriotic thing to do.
In the military you can't publicly question the motive or morality behind lawful orders, so it is an absolutely crucial role civilians need to perform.
For example, I am proud of my service, but I still have no idea what victory in Iraq was supposed to look like or what we were supposed to bring back to the American people.
In Afghanistan, where I've also had friends fight and die ... our withdrawal is open to criticism, but no one has been able to tell me what the end goal of staying there more than two decades was or how many more lives it would be worth to accomplish.
I know Vietnam-era veterans who echo similar sentiments. But Monday-morning quarterbacking past wars is of limited utility.
I personally don't want to see any more kids needlessly dying anywhere, or US troops dying or returning home traumatized for anything that could have been avoided through soft power or wasn't an existential threat to America.
I couldn't speak out in uniform, but now free from the UCMJ, speaking up is a public duty and privilege.
Vibrant discussions of current domestic issues and international conflicts still matter, they need to happen, and current speech shouldn't be stifled for some sacrosanct respect for the silent dead.
If we want to show respect, we should be engaged citizens, and protect the integrity and well-being of our living troops, veterans, and the next generations.
Accomplishing these goals requires challenging the actions of those presently in power, and speaking up for those who aren't.
Sincerely,
Peter Howard, Cheyenne
