Ruminations on Veterans' Day

I write this column on Veterans' Day, dedicated to the men and women who have served this nation, or are now serving it, in the armed forces. A good feel for the nature of this service can be had by entering Nassau Hall, whose walls bear the name of Princeton's warriors who paid the ultimate price exacted by that service. In an ideal world, in a nation at war, the leaders of a university marching to the slogan "Princeton in the Nation's Service" would organize a campus-wide event, to formally salute these warriors, to thank them for their sacrifices, and to hold them up as role models for one type of service Princetonian's can render the nation: smartly and humanely leading the nation's brave enlisted men and women on the battlefield. I doubt that more than a handful of universities in this country did so — certainly not Princeton. Fortunately, Rear Admiral Kirk Unruh of the University's Development Office organized a small but elegant gathering in the Chapel to help those of us who do care pay the respect that is due.

I offer these somber observations after reading all week in the national press stories on the large incidence of veterans among the nation's homeless, including veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. We read that the Veteran Department's Health System, excellent though it appears to be in what it is funded and able to do, is not funded and staffed to provide adequate mental health services to the growing numbers of veterans who, after several tours of combat duty, return from these battle zones scarred.

As popcorn-munching civilians never closer to war than the distance to a movie screen, we cannot imagine what wounds may be left in the mind and soul of someone who has lived in a foreign, extremely hostile environment, being watched 24/7 by tenacious, hidden, angry and clever enemies who fight in unconventional ways. It must be like permanently walking at night through certain parts of U.S. cities declared as too dangerous by the bell hops of hotels. We civilians have not seen the human carnage some of our veterans have had to witness. Indeed, from what little I do know, veterans can suffer just as much from the carnage they and their own buddies may have suffered, as from the carnage they may have had to visit on others. Do American civilians ever wonder what might go through the mind of, say, a young artillery officer — until not long ago a happy college undergraduate taught in the humanistic tradition — who has had to direct lethal artillery fire to a distant, hostile village, without knowing exactly who all might be hurt or killed by the shells targeted there?

In his "Party here, Sacrifice Over There," (New York Times, Oct. 20, 2007) Will Bardenwerper '89, a veteran infantry officer, remarked eloquently on the disconnect between the dedication and sacrifice borne by our troops in the battle zones, many of them on their third or even fourth tour of combat duty, and the endless party atmosphere among these warriors' contemporaries on Wall Street. Upon his return, another Princeton warrior was asked by cheerful alum, "So, how was nightlife in Kabul?" Though as innocent as it was ignorant, the query cut in the mind of someone who nearly lost his life on that distant battlefield.

One must wonder, too, how many members of Congress are aware of the moral mortgage the nation writes when it sends its warriors to these wars. Last summer I testified before the Senate Veterans Committee on Sen. Larry Craig's (R-Idaho) concern over the growing burden of veterans' health care on the federal budget, outlays which have been rising at 7.5 percent per year. In fact, even at that growth rate, VA health spending would rise to only 4.4 percent of total federal spending by 2050 (less than 1 percent of GDP), up from the current 1.15 percent of total federal spending (0.22 percent of the GDP). And that prospect worries a U.S. Senator who, by the way, never wore the nation's uniform?

These thoughts inevitably call to mind the last verse of Rudyard Kipling's famous poem "Tommy," a British soldier sent by that nation to fight its "White Man's Burden" wars on distant shores: You talk o' better food for us, an' schools, an' fires, an' all: We'll wait for extry rations if you treat us rational. Don't mess about the cook-room slops, but prove it to our face The Widow's Uniform is not the soldier-man's disgrace. For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Chuck him out, the brute!" But it's "Saviour of "is country" when the guns begin to shoot; An' it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' anything you please; An' Tommy ain't a bloomin' fool — you bet that Tommy sees!

Tommy and his comrades then were no more fooled by the much mouthed and largely empty professions of gratitude they heard than are many of our veterans today. Uwe E. Reinhardt is the James Madison Professor of Political Economy and a professor in the Wilson School. He can be reached at reinhardt@princeton.edu.