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OPINIONS
John Patrick Grace: U.S. patriotism up though Afghan challenge is steep
American patriotism and troop morale, both of which had taken some hits during the Iraq War, seem to be on the rise again. That's very good news for the country and, we can hope, for the wider world.
Not long ago, the U.S. military was experiencing a crisis of recruiting and retention. That appears to have abated. News over Ohio Public Radio said that ROTC enrollment at Ohio University in Athens was soaring for both the Army and the Air Force. I'd guess that this represents not an anomaly, but a trend found on other campuses as well.
Since the U.S. pullback from the cities in Iraq and stronger Iraqi Army and police engagement of al-Quida and other insurgent forces, morale among our troops in that theater is up and casualties are significantly down. (A late report, however, says recent suicide and roadside bombs in Afghanistan have caused morale there to dip.)
Brig. Gen. Melvin L. Burch, assistant adjustant general over the West Virginia Army National Guard, told a Veterans Day gathering in Huntington that he has been impressed beyond words with the stalwart sense of duty of troops wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"No matter how bad their wounds, they want to get well so they can get back into the fight," Gen. Burch said. The flag-waving crowd of more than 300 who gathered at the Memorial Arch in Ritter Park cheered this and other remarks by Gen. Burch, Vietnam Navy veteran Mayor Kim Wolfe and speakers from the American Legion and the Veterans Administration.
The same day, Vice President Joe Biden reported on his recent visit to Ft. Lewis, a U.S. Army base near Tacoma, Wash. He had just met with Ft. Lewis families who'd lost their soldier husbands, sons or daughters to the Afghan conflict. He said their acceptance of the ultimate sacrifice of their loved ones for the sake of freedom humbled him and moved him.
"They all thanked me for coming to see them," Biden said. "They thanked me when really it is all of us who should be thanking them."
While the American public may be worn down from eight-plus years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, our military men and women, overall, seem to be holding strong.
U.S. casualties in Afghanistan are now three or four times what they are in Iraq, and media attention, too has shifted from the oilfields and deserts of Iraq to the small towns and rugged mountain wilderness in which much of the Afghan conflict is waged
Nonetheless, both the British and the U.S. public have been clamoring for an end to engagement in Afghanistan just as Gen. Stanley McCrystal, U.S. commander in that sector, has been asking for a surge of up to 40,000 more troops.
What the troops on the ground seem to have discovered is what a majority of the American people have yet to grasp and that is a notion that stabilizing Afghanistan makes sense and will serve U.S. national interests.
None of us should mistake Afghanistan for "another Iraq." The two countries have many dissimilarities, not only in terrain but also in education and political sophistication. Iraq has a highly educated professional class and a sense of being a country, while Afghanistan labors under a 97 percent illiteracy rate, little sense of national unity but instead a tradition of tribal loyalties to local warlords.
Thus the challenge is steep if the United States and its allies are to groom Afghan soldiers to counter the Taliban effort to regain control of the country, resubjugate women and perhaps reopen the door for al-Quida to train suicide bombers and other kinds of terrorists.
We'll need all the patriotism we can muster.
John Patrick Grace is a veteran of both the U.S. Army and the U.S. Air Force reserves. He is now a book editor and publisher based in Huntington.
