The Observer | Military sacrifices must not go unnoticed

Zachary Kaye Columnist

For the unfortunate families and friends of those who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan, America’s current wars are all too close to home. For the rest of us, our nation’s military actions do not affect us much at all.

During the invasion and occupation of two countries, we have enjoyed generous (if skewered) tax cuts, only relatively mild increases in gas prices, no rationing, no restrictions on purchases, none of the disruptive business of a full mobilization, and the constant stream of new reality TV programs.
There is not much societal pressure for all fit men to join the military, nor have there been any pleas from the Bush administration for Americans to serve. Perhaps, considering the administration’s own service records, that would be too hypocritical even for them.

It is not hard to get the idea that we do not need to do anything for our country. Sit back, enjoy your reality shows, thrill yourself in your gas-guzzling SUV, and maybe, if you are feeling particularly patriotic, stick a flag on your bumper or on your front lawn. If that is not a sufficient indication of love for country, then what is?

Our democracy fights wars with its own unwanted and tragically throws away the lives of those who have the least power to make decisions. If the children of the wealthy, the children of privilege, were being killed daily, this country would be out of Iraq so fast it would make your head spin.

This is a conflict the administration wants to portray as sterile. The government has constantly tried to hide the brutality of war from the public. By barring photographs of coffins of soldiers, by prohibiting, until recently, photographs of funerals, and by refusing to reveal the severity of casualties, the government has distanced us from the realities of conflict.

Sidney Dyer, like thousands of others, has not been as fortunate as most Americans to be sheltered from the harshness of war. For her, war means the loss of her father. I have never met Sidney Dyer. She is a pretty, six-year-old girl from Florida. I have seen photographs of her taken by New York Times photographers, and I am sure that if I met her, I would be at a loss for words. Her father, Scott Dyer, was killed on Oct. 11 in Afghanistan. The image of this child and the thought of her awful grief pains me. Yet I cannot even imagine the anguish she feels. Her father made a sacrifice for this country, and her life is now shattered.

I can, and do, hate the wars our country is involved in now. But if I wanted to, I could push them out of my mind. I could get up every day and live a perfectly selfish life. Sidney does not have that luxury. We owe her, and everyone like her, the respect they deserve. And we do not do that by putting a flag decal on our cars. We must act as citizens. Our soldiers should not be treated as mercenaries to be discarded at the whim of the administration. We must have a sense of citizenship, of collectivity, of responsibility.

Until the death of a soldier pains us all, until we are moved by the endless carnage, until we decide that this country needs no more Sidney Dyer’s, growing up without a father, we should expect to be in Iraq and similar wars for a long time to come.