Spc. Ryan J. Grady
Editor’s note: This editorial is a departure from vtdigger.org’s daily reporting, which is focused on news about business, politics and state government.
News came yesterday of the death of a Vermont soldier, Ryan J. Grady. The 25-year-old from East Burke was the victim of an improvised explosive device attack near Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan.
Grady died a world away from his home. Four soldiers, whose names have not been released, were injured in the attack, three seriously enough that they were flown to Germany for medical treatment. Though we don’t know who they are, where they are from or the extent of their injuries, we do know this: Their lives, and the lives of their families, will never be the same.
It has been four years since a Vermont soldier died in Afghanistan, and the casualties among American troops have escalated there as the Obama administration has ramped up deployments to stabilize the country. Last year was deemed the bloodiest of Operation Enduring Freedom — in one month alone, July of 2009, there were 1,000 IED attacks on coalition forces, according to Stars and Stripes, the independent U.S. armed forces news service.
Dozens of Vermont Guard members have been injured since 1,500 soldiers in the 86th Infantry Brigade Combat Team were deployed in January, according to The Burlington Free Press.
Vermonters have risked their lives for a mixture of reasons — to get an education, to make money, to try their mettle and to act on a belief in democratic ideals. A few have served three or four tours of duty.
Yesterday, when word spread about Grady’s death, politicians sent their condolences to his family, and they called for Vermonters to honor, as Vermont’s Sen. Bernie Sanders put it, “all those who served our nation,” on the Fourth of July.
But how do we honor the war dead and those who have returned from the battlefield suicidal or permanently maimed? We use the euphemism “ultimate sacrifice” to describe soldiers killed in conflict, but have we lost a shared sense of that sacrifice?
These are difficult questions to answer as the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq become increasingly abstract for Americans who don’t have a loved one fighting overseas. Some of us have forgotten why we’re there in the first place; others opposed the wars from the beginning and don’t want to accept the reality that U.S. troops have been on Afghan soil since shortly after the World Trade Center attacks in 2001.
Other questions remain. Can we really achieve our objectives in a country where people have grown to hate us, our firepower and our notion of a democratic form of government that is as foreign to them as we are? Will our government continue to fight in a conflict that could prove futile?
What’s known is this simple fact: War kills and maims. War doesn’t just destroy the lives of soldiers. It also destroys something in the lives of those of us who are left behind.
Is it worth it?
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Is it worth it? NO!
We are extremely fortunate to have some many loyal Americans who volunteer to put their lives and their families welfare on the line for us. We do not do enough for them.
Most Americans, including my self, have no envolvment, commitment or sacrifice in our current wars. This is shameful. Our federal representative did not evan have the will to delclare war if they support it or alternatively vote to kill it thru lack of funding. We all just muddle along why soldiers die and families are ruined.
We do not evan have the integrity to pay for these wars in taxes. We are increasing our debt daily to pay for the wars and sending the bill thru time to our children and grand childrem. Shame on us all this 4th of July.
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Take a look at Mark Twain’s The War Prayer. It describes a church scene on the eve of the departure of the troops to some war. Gathered in the sanctuary, the assembled, some with their warrior sons next to them in the pews, hear the Pastor beseech God for victory. And, then, a stranger mounts the pulpit, to the shock of the community. The stranger mentions that the Pastor’s prayer is actually two: one, the spoken words; the other, the unspoken words that only God hears. The outsider than speaks the unspoken appeal.
The War Prayer concludes:
“O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle — be Thou near them! With them — in spirit — we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it — for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.
(*After a pause.*) “Ye have prayed it; if ye still desire it, speak! The messenger of the Most High waits!”
It was believed afterward that the man was a lunatic, because there was no sense in what he said. ”
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Read The War Prayer, and also read Robert Graves’ book Goodbye to All That. Graves, a British author and poet, served and was wounded in the trenches of World War I. A late friend of mine, a Vermonter of some stature who fought horrible infantry battles in World War II in Europe, gave me Goodbye to All That as one of the most graphic descriptions of war he knew.
Read these, and maybe your question, “Is it worth it” will be answered.
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I’m starting to think that the governor, or the next governor should recall our entire national guard contingent from Iraq and Afghanistan.
A national guard is meant to protect threats to a nation itself. The current mission doesn’t embody that, and if it costs us federal funding to keep our national guard at HOME, then so be it.
The gods of the hills are not the gods of the valleys, as Ethan Allen said, and as the founding Vermonters declared: To hell with Congress, to hell with New York, and to hell with Britain.
That sentiment needs to be shared by Vermonters today.
“Our vow is recorded–our banner unfurled,
In the name of Vermont we defy all the world!”
- Song of the Vermont Republic
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I enjoyed Twain’s war prayer there, written by a man that had seen a little of what war has to offer. The ghost in that prayer is actually the ghost of an unarmed man shot and killed by nervous Missouri confederate volunteers in the civil war, like Twain, who served for a short time before realizing that the war probably was not worth it — and eminently correct appraisal.
“Will our government continue to fight in a conflict that could prove futile?”
Good questions, Anne. Is there an answer? It reminds me of Nxion’s “peace with honor,” scheme to withdraw from Vietnam while avoid admitting that America had been defeated there. A couple friends of mine, young draftees, that had no choice in the matter, died for that and Nixon did not seem to care that much about their passing. What did Ryan Grady’s death serve? What cause? Is there one now, outside of getting out of the mess intact? What about all those invisible scars that the Vermonters (several friends of mine are over there) will have when trying to re-adjust to the quiet green mountain state? A close friend of mine got back from “the Nam,” as they called it, wounded and scarred for life, and finally ended the conflicts within himself in 06 by his own hand. What did it serve? Will the wounded in Afghanistan have the same struggles and torments that my friend had?
Is war worth it? Never. But why does this race called humanity keep pursuing it with such zeal?
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Thank you, Anne, for this piece. The death of any loved one, for whatever reason, is always hard. It is especially hard when and if the loved ones question the need/reason for the death.
Can we assume that our fellow Vermonters in uniform willingly chose to don the uniform and put themselves in harm’s way? Would Grady have chosen some other “career path” had one been available? Or did he come from a long line of military?
In the end, I can’t pass judgment on his choices, or those of his family. But I can, and do, pass judgment on those elected officials who sent, and continue to send, our young ones into harm’s way. Especially when the need is unclear and the cost is high.
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I am the only gubernatorial candidate that has made it my priority to bring home the Vermont National Guard.
Please have a look…
http://www.governorsteele.com/platform/
Dennis Steele
Independent for governor
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It never surprises me ,though it always dissapoints me, with media , when the liberal media elements honor it’s anti- war agenda first , before seeking the individual soldiers reasons for serving . No wonder America ,and in particular Vermont, is in such a moral deficiency. I do not know this soldiers reasons for wearing the uniform but I do know many others. There should first be honor and then criticism ,but then that’s always the way of the civilian population isn’t it? In the end it’s the soldier who pays the most, always. And the anti’s who sacrifice the least. Perhaps you might , in time , seek to know the man , not the sentiment of questioning everything, always.