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?
