\u201cWar is hell.\u201d<\/p>\n
Daniel Somers and his family didn\u2019t need Sherman to tell them this.<\/p>\n
Somers was a distinguished Iraq War veteran who killed himself on June 10.\u00a0 The hundreds of combat missions and other action of which he partook left Somers with a legacy of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, brain injuries, and an assortment of war-induced injuries that rendered every moment of daily existence intolerable.<\/p>\n
Shortly before taking his life, he wrote a letter bidding farewell to his loved ones.\u00a0 The latter has since given Gawker <\/i>permission to publish it.<\/p>\n
Upon informing his family that it was his love for them that managed to keep him alive this long, Somers goes on to describe his body as \u201ca cage, a source of pain and constant problems,\u201d and his mind as \u201ca wasteland, filled with visions of incredible horror, unceasing depression, and crippling anxiety [.]\u201d\u00a0 Somers writes that he is incapable of laughing and crying, incapable of deriving pleasure from any activity, save sleep.\u00a0 Thus, \u201cto sleep forever seems to be the most merciful thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
He assures his loved ones that it is not they who brought him to this point, but the government that forced him \u201cto participate in things, the enormity of which is hard to describe.\u201d\u00a0 During his first deployment in Iraq, Somers states, he and his comrades-in-arms were made to perpetrate \u201cwar crimes, crimes against humanity.\u201d<\/p>\n
Though he insists that he made his \u201cbest effort to stop these events,\u201d he is equally insistent that they were too horrible in nature from which to bounce back.\u00a0 Only \u201ca sociopath\u201d could achieve this feat, Somers asserts.<\/p>\n
Yet for as unspeakable as these \u201ccrimes against humanity\u201d were, it was covering them up that further fueled Somers\u2019 despondency.\u00a0 \u201cTo force me to do these things and then participate in the ensuing coverup [sic] is more than any government has the right to demand.\u201d<\/p>\n
While taking shots at Barack Obama, George W. Bush, and Dick Cheney, Somers accuses his government of abandoning, not just himself, but just those veterans who it consigned to the hell of war, including and especially the approximately two dozen veterans who commit suicide each and every day.<\/p>\n
Somers\u2019 plight, like that of far too many veterans of the post-9\/11 era, is, at best, tragic.\u00a0 At worst, it is scandalous, an outrage.\u00a0 In any event, though, its significance lies in the light that it sheds on our politics, particularly the politics of the Republican Party.<\/p>\n
War is the one circumstance under which the government conducting it becomes an activist <\/i>government, i.e. a Big <\/i>Government. It is the one time, more so than any other, when it is expected that the government will enlist the daily activities of civil society in the service of fulfilling its purposes.\u00a0 That war is the emblem of Big Government explains why those who wish to see America\u2019s federal government assume this activist role on the domestic scene not infrequently invoke the imagery of war (\u201cThe War on Drugs\u201d and \u201cThe War on Poverty\u201d are just two examples that come to mind).<\/p>\n
But as real conservatives have always known, individual liberty and Big Government are mutually incompatible.\u00a0 Real conservatives have also known that it is not uncommon for the best laid plans of men\u2014particularly when they are men holding political office\u2014to go awry.\u00a0 And under no conditions is this more likely to occur than the unconditioned chaos of war.<\/p>\n
In spite of this, most of today\u2019s Republicans who insist upon calling themselves \u201cconservatives\u201d maintain that we are at war with an enemy that, because it has none of the distinctness of those governments that we\u2019ve gone to war with in the past, promises to be intractable. Our war is a war without end.<\/p>\n
However, a war without end requires a big military without end.<\/p>\n
And a big military without end is<\/i> Big Government without end.<\/i><\/p>\n
To put it directly, the Republican Party is either self-delusional or deceptive, for its rhetoric of \u201climited government\u201d and \u201cindividual liberty\u201d is radically at odds with its enthusiasm for growing the military ad infinitum.\u00a0 \u00a0A smaller, decentralized, truly federal <\/i>government most definitely is compatible with liberty.\u00a0 In fact, the latter can\u2019t exist without the former.\u00a0 Calls for Big Government, though, are nothing less than calls for a drastic diminution of liberty and, as in the case of Somers, ever greater individual suffering.<\/p>\n
These Republican \u201cconservatives\u201d should bear in mind what no true conservative would ever need to be told: as long as they get their wish, the Daniel Somers of the world will only multiply.<\/p>\n
\u00a0 <\/i><\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cWar is hell.\u201d Daniel Somers and his family didn\u2019t need Sherman to tell them this. Somers was a distinguished Iraq War veteran who killed himself on June 10.\u00a0 The hundreds of combat missions and other action of which he partook left Somers with a legacy of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, brain injuries, and an assortment…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-890","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n