"The Making and Un-making of a Marine"

Breaking the Trance of Denial

When I first saw Do Ho Suh's "Metal Jacket, 1992-2001," showing in the Museum of Arts and Design in New York City I thought it was made of ancient chain mail. On close look I saw that it was made from 3,000 dog tags on a U.S. military jacket liner. In that moment it took on a profound meaning and I was reminded that there are times in history that art becomes the only truth being told.

This is one of those times. While our politicians lie and the military offers only propaganda, the media has failed in its job of telling the truth about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The truth is that American soldiers have been sacrificing their lives and no one will fully report on their cries. Their deaths, buried in the newspapers, fall further and further away from the front page.

It is now clear that the media in America has become the tongue of politicians, the teeth of the powerful and the cheeks of those with money. The talking heads will lose their air time if they do not lip-synch what will sell to the buying public.

I am a Viet Nam Vet and a therapist who understands how the pains of war become silenced from the ears of the public. It took years for me not to hear "Baby Killer" being uttered by the protesters of the sixties. The only public peep of honor for Vietnam vets I heard came ten years after the war in a poorly attended parade in New York City. In the thirty-four years since the end of the Vietnam War, over one hundred thousand vets have committed suicide. Vietnam vets still highly populate the homeless numbers although Iraq and Afghanistan vets are closing ranks. I know that rampant addiction and domestic violence has been tearing up veterans' families for years. I have stood in this "silent war after the war" and felt its destruction and I can tell you it is happening again today; you just can't see nor hear it.

If you want to break this silence and witness the truth, turn off the TV and throw the newspaper in the trash. Turn up public radio, step into the public square, and listen to the artists in our midst. There is where the blood flows. Only there will you hear the screams echo from the parents of the dead. There is the only reality that cannot be taken away by distraction. There is where it takes courage to accept the responsibility of how we have been hiding behind the rhetoric of those who say they know how to "fix it."

Don't fool yourselves into believing the problems we must shoulder rest with our elected politicians or the lack of a draft or the aggressiveness of the enemy or the leftovers of 9/11. The problem is all those silent deaths that not only come from the soldier youth of our country and from Iraq and Afghanistan, but all deaths related to this current war. We must also add the forlorn parents and the families of the dead that we do not see or hear because the space for our grief is filled with a constant barrage of advertisements and commercials telling us life is good.

Well, life is not good! Go to a truthful movie about war; go to a play about combat that will bring you to tears; go to a vet's website and listen hard to the cries. Dare to tear off the mask hiding your eyes and look at what you are a part of. See how lives have become someone's income and then make the decision to stop spending them.