Opening Up the Secrets of War

Opening up the Secrets of War
Speech given at the Rededication of the Peace Pole
at Lansing Community College,
Lansing Michigan, August 5, 2007
by
Becky Payne

In my lifetime, our country has opened many secrets up to the light of day. Homosexuality - AIDS - discrimination. This nation is talking - is healing - from the hurt that silence and shame have brought to these subjects.

There is still one topic about which there is a great silence, and that is war. We talk much more about the heroics of war than the damages. We don't show the coffins coming home. We don't talk about people getting rich off of war while children suffer without food and water. We don't show pictures of the houses we bomb. We don't talk about the rapes, the mutilations, the savagery.

And we don't show the emotional costs that war wreaks on those we send to fight. We pretend that a parade and a flag will make it all right. We pretend that we are doing right by the innocents involved and that a purple heart will make up for the devastation that we cause to the soldiers.

We are here today to honor Ben Miller, a young man who couldn't bear what war did to him. It is an outrage what we do to the kids whom we send to fight:

Thirty percent of veterans of this war suffer from Post-traumatic Stress - that's the number that have come forth so far - there will be more.

One third of the homeless men in this country are veterans - so wounded inside they can't even maintain a shelter over their heads.

War devastates those it touches and the wounds don't heal. Yet we allow recruiters to roam the hallways of our high schools urging kids to sign up. Be a hero. Serve your country. We should be out there standing in front of anyone who would tear up our kids this way.

What makes the grass grow green?
Blood makes the grass grow green.

This chant is used at basic training.

This is the beginning of the dehumanizing that the military must do to turn eighteen year olds from giggly kids to killers for a cause. They yell at them and curse them to help them harden up inside for what they are about to do. Hardening them up.

And we think we are a civilized people? We laugh and smirk at peace activists chanting and marching? Why do we let this go on?

My dad was in W.W.II - the "good war" - the "romantic war". He was never the same. He had shock treatments, anti-depressants. He spent years in and out of VA hospitals. But nothing could get that horror out of his mind.

I tried to figure him out - why he yelled, why he drank so much... why he cried. I wanted to love him, but he wasn't really there.

Later, I fell in love with a Vietnam veteran. He would fly into rages and threaten to kill the meter reader. Our kids grew up saying, "Oh, there goes Dad again..."

It is unnatural to kill people. It is unnatural to drive tanks over houses and drop bombs on cities. You can't harden kids up for this. It is unnatural to give control of your morals to someone else who will order you to kill. The ones who suffer when they come home?... They are the ones with a conscience. The sad thing is that they are so alone in their pain. And we leave them in it - we don't know what to do, we don't think it's our problem. We pull down our flag-decorated blinders, while these kids try to fit in with horrible memories running through their heads.

The pain that Ben and the other veterans thought was theirs alone belongs on our shoulders. This is society's problem.

If we all had to live with our share of the horror that lives in our soldiers' hearts- we might find other ways to solve national problems.

Instead of scoffing at peace people marching with their signs and drums, we should scoff at the idea of sending kids to shoot each other to resolve national issues. Isn't that the most ridiculous idea?

When we are brave enough to look - really look - at the absurdities of it, civilization will learn to avoid war.

Society must change. We who understand that must be strong enough to stand up to the derision of those who don't yet see it.

We here today can do our part. We live in this mighty country - we have freedom, food, education - we have a voice. It is us who must act.

Let us think and educate and talk and work for non-violent solutions.

War can only exist in shadow. Let us pour light on the subject. Let us remember the tragedy of Ben and the others like him and use that as a catalyst to start acting. We have the knowledge and the power. We can each do our part.

Thank you.

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Note from Margaret N:

The August 6, 2007 Lansing State Journal carried a story on a memorial gathering for Ben Miller - where Becky Payne spoke Sunday afternoon, August 5th - and on the re-dedication of a Peace Pole at Lansing Community College. Here is a link to their story and photos:

http://www.lansingstatejournal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2007708060333

Posted at Monday, August 06, 2007
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