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The aftermath of
election results on November 9 distracted attention from Veteran’s Day, just
two days later. Thankfully, there’s a
better alternative to saying “thank you for your service” to a veteran this
year: watch the so-titled film.

Tom Donahue’s new
documentary raises difficult questions about the
struggles of veterans after war and, importantly, the decisions of a country
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The film also reminds
its viewers why the phrase sounds superficial in the ears of some veterans. Take, for instance, Dan Cnossen. In 2012, the 32-year-old Navy SEAL was working
his way through the Denver airport, on his way to Washington’s Walter Reed
military hospital to have his prosthetics adjusted. Dan lost both his legs
after stepping on an improvised explosive device in Afghanistan in 2009, and
his misaligned prosthetics were rubbing to the point of bleeding. As he painfully
made his way toward his gate, an airline employee asked with presumption, “Are
you a vet?” Dan nodded yes, to which she responded “thank you for your
service.” Dan managed to smile but was
left wondering how genuine goodwill could feel so empty.

The problem with the hackneyed phrase is not just that it rings hollow. More pointedly, it reflects military
reverence that does little to compensate a burdened military. More subtly, the phrase sidesteps any doubt
about the decision to burden those troops.

As with my father,
my military career was defined by an experience with war—he served in Vietnam,
while I served in Iraq and Afghanistan. But unlike my father, my generation was
warmly welcomed home, even as many were divided about the wars we fought in.
For some, the decision to send us to war represented a failure to learn the
lessons of Vietnam. For others, the decision to bring us home represented a
failure of commitment.

If one lesson emerged from Vietnam, it was to honor the troops, even if
you question the war. This tension—military
reverence with doubt—manifests in public polling. Confidence
in the U.S. military , but Americans are less confident in its
capabilities. Since starting asking the question 23 years ago, American views
of their military as the No. 1 power in the world are at an all-time low of
49%.

Ill-prepared for a post-terrorism model of warfare, this tension emerged—alongside
a corresponding civil-military divide—as we fell into controversial wars of
choice. Even Afghanistan, for instance,
was not an existential fight; al-Qaida demonstrated unprecedented lethality, but
it did not pose a strategic threat to the United States. Moreover, most U.S.
troops were killed fighting not al-Qa’ida but the Taliban, an enemy that had
not attacked us on 9/11. 

While some called it the “war on terror,” a better description was the “war
after terror.” We asked the nation to get back to business, which is the best
course of action after terrorism– it is how the terrorists lose. But in sending
its military to war—while the nation professes normalcy—a gap emerged between
the two.

Americans did not plant victory gardens or work in ammunition
factories. The only “draftees” were the soldiers compelled to remain in the
“all-volunteer” force (through a policy known as “stop-loss”). The staggering financial cost of our modern
wars, likely to exceed WWII expenditures, was deferred by passing this debt to
future generations. Americans honored,
but did not protest, the flag-draped coffins that returned from abroad.

So while the emotional trauma of 9/11 enabled a soft trigger for war, the
ambivalence of this widening gap made it easy to stay in war. America’s longest conflict became an in-between
war: necessary enough to deploy troops, but not necessary enough to die for.

This dynamic was reflected in expediting
mine-resistant vehicles to Afghanistan in response to an evolving IED threat.
These $600,000 “MRAP” vehicles were not constructed for counterinsurgency or
counterterrorism missions—they were purpose built to transport troops safely,
consistent with “force protection” becoming our top priority in Afghanistan. Unfortunately, even the MRAP could not
protect soldiers from life-altering mental or moral injuries, and many
of our veterans suffer such hidden injuries in silence. In the end, the MRAP reflected the awkwardness
of a war in which the primary
purpose of our presence was to protect itself, and the false comfort that the
costs had been minimized.

I lost a best friend and several teammates to the wars, and I got off
easy. The full cost to our nation, to
include the burden carried by our veterans and the gold star families, is
beyond measure. Thanking a veteran, like Dan Cnossen who lost both his legs,
for their service doesn’t rebalance the burden of fighting the war—it
highlights how large the imbalance has become.

Thank You
for Your Service gives its viewer a troubling glimpse of this
imbalance, evoking frustration with government bureaucracy struggling with a
deluge of veteran trauma. For the White
House and Pentagon, it is a reminder that reverence of the military is no
substitute for strong civilian oversight of the military. Deeper down, it is a cautionary tale about the
risks of low civic participation in a democracy and, more specifically, the
perils of a nation that doesn’t share the costs of its decisions to go to
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