This has become a question that is really very context dependent. today's context makes it an especially narrow question. We are told that Thousands of soldiers are unfit for war duty This is interesting because it raises all kinds of questions about what we have become as a Nation and as human beings. I was able to go to college because I was "fit" for war duty and could therefore get a full Regular NROTC scholarship and then Serve as an officer in the USMC. That shaped my life. Oddly, it did not seem to shape it as it did most. I was a leader in the anti-war movement during the Vietnam fiasco. I served from 1957-60 and then went to graduate school and got a PhD in physiology. This notion of "fitness" for killing your fellow man needs examination for it reveals things about us that need to be dealt with. Read on below to see what I mean.
In the article linked above, we are told:
More than 13,000 active-duty Army soldiers -- the equivalent of four combat brigades -- are sidelined as unfit for war because of injury, illness or mental stress.
In an unmistakable sign that the Army is struggling with exhaustion after nine years of fighting, combat commanders whose units are headed to Afghanistan increasingly choose to leave behind soldiers who can no longer perform, putting additional strain on those who still can.
The growing pool of "non-deployable'' soldiers make up roughly 10 percent of the 116,423 active-duty soldiers currently in Iraq and Afghanistan. Thousands more Army reservists and National Guard soldiers are also considered unfit to deploy, a growing burden on an Army that has sworn to care for them as long as needed.
"These 13,000 soldiers, that number's not going to go away," said Brig. Gen. Gary Cheek, who heads the Army's Warrior Transition Command, which oversees the treatment and disposition of unfit soldiers. "If anything, it's going to get larger as the Army continues the tempo it's on.
What comes to your mind as you read these words? I am asking you to look inside yourself and then reflect on what your reaction is.
The reason is this: we are all too ready to accept "fitness for war duty" as a norm in our society. If it is a norm then I hope I am very abnormal. Any society that sees "fitness for war duty" as a trait they want to be widespread among their youth is a very sick society if you don't like this way of "solving problems". We are dominated by war. If we want to solve a problem of any kind we feel that "making war" on it is the way to mobilize public support. What kind of people are we? Why is war such a good thing to us? The article goes on to give us this quote:
"We are seeing the cumulative effects of years of war -- and they are cumulative, the physical and the mental,'' said Gen. George Casey, Army chief of staff. With the growing number of unfit soldiers, the Army has been forced to send into combat units manned "at less than 90 percent,'' Casey told reporters in May.
Why do I want to shout a sarcastic DUH!? My Marine Corps training changed me profoundly yet I still was able to hold on to some core value that told me that grooming myself to be able to kill other human beings was not only wrong but detrimental to who I really was. Today, at 74, I look back and wonder at what ever allowed me to let them do that to me.
We pride ourselves as a Nation at our ability to take our young and dehumanize their fellow humans for them so they wil be "fit for war duty". Another way of saying this that might be more frank is that we make them into killers. But the article seems to touch on the real truth here. It did not work on me and thankfully I never saw combat so I did not have to endure the ultimate tearing at my psyche that killing would have been. I can't believe that I am that unusual. Our young have to have some value for human life and demonizing people like the Japanese and Germans so we can kill them goes only so far. I chose our WWII "enemies" as examples to force the issue. Ask your son or daughter to go out and kill a "Jap" or a "Hun" today and what reaction would you expect? Did their defeat in WWII turn them into the humans we see them as now? This is crazy and you need to see how crazy it all really is.
Now we have new "enemies". They are so very bad each time that we feel justified in killing large numbers of non combatants in the process of killing them. Women and children are worth killing to get this "enemy". What insanity holds this as an acceptable way to conduct a Nation's business? For that's what it always boils down to. We said it in the sixties:
War is good business. Invest your son
This nation was born out of war it killed the people it stole the land from and it has been going on ever since. I hate to talk about it because I see no answer. maybe the old saw about living by the sword will come back to finish us? I don't know. We don't respect other humans. Look at Arizona for example. We don't respect the planet that sustains us. What are American values? Are "real" Americans the ones who are "fit for war duty"? It seems so, except that the ones who make the wars and profit for them never seem to have to be involved themselves. they just pocket the profits and make sure we are all good patriots and support their wars. I want to see the anti-war spirit that peaked in the sixties revived. let's stop this nonsense, come to our senses, and use our resources and our will to solve the many real crises we face. feed people, stop raping the planet, learn to live together in harmony. That's what we need to cultivate fitness for. Will we ever?