Support Our Troops By Standing Up For Them When They Come Home

By Ashlea Brockway

(Ashlea Brockway lives in Port Colborne with her husband, Iraq war resister Jeremy Brockway, and their two Canadian-born sons. A passionate spokesperson for the cause of the war-resisters, Ashlea will be speaking at the David S. Howes Theatre at Brock University on Monday, Feb. 7, at 5:00 p.m. Ashlea will be joined by Bruce Beyer, from the Buffalo Chapter of Veterans For Peace, and Michelle Robidoux from the Toronto-based War Resisters Support Campaign.)

Support the Troops!

Jeremy Brockway, his wife Ashlea and their children at home in Port Colborne, Ontario.

Exactly what the heck does that mean, support the troops? As far as I’ve seen, it means that people are all for spending up to five bucks to put a ribbon on their car or house while young men and women are shipped off to die. People seem to want to support the troops when they are going off to die fighting for one cause or another but suddenly that support vanishes for all who make it back alive.

In Canada, we celebrate Remembrance Day. It’s a day to honour the memory of those who perished while trying to protect others, whether foreign or domestic. I think that it is great, honouring those who were willing to give up their lives for us; but is just remembering them a sufficient way to honour them? I don’t think so. I think that the very best way to honour them, in addition to remembering them, would be to treat those who make it home the same way we would want those who have passed away in combat treated.

The first step towards accomplishing this lies in realizing that American and Canadian troops are all brothers/sisters in arms. As allies they have often fought side by side in conflict, and will likely continue to do so in the future. Your service member who passed away may have passed away protecting mine. Don’t you think that they would still want the surviving service member to be protected when they returned home?

Many Canadian and American troops are coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan
suffering from debilitating disorders such as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). The very people that the deceased service members died trying to protect are now coming home with severe physical and mental health conditions that often go untreated. These conditions, although largely invisible to the general public, create heartbreak, chaos, and despair in the lives of the injured and
|heir families.

I speak from the perspective of a Marine wife. My husband, and countless of others
like him, has been diagnosed with severe PTSD. Even so, the military was about to redeploy him into the war zone. What he needed then, and still needs, is treatment
and not total disregard for his life and the sacrifice he was willing to make.

By putting seriously injured people back into war zones the U.S. military is doing at least 3 potentially devastating things:

1. They are showing how little value they place on the lives of their troops and how little they actually care for them on any sort of personal level. The suicide rate for previously deployed service members is quite high;

2. They are dishonouring the lives of those who died protecting their country as well as their fellow service members by not properly caring for those who have survived, which often result in service members wondering, “What am I really fighting for? No one cares if I live or die, so why should I go on?”;

3. They are creating increasingly dangerous and potentially deadly situations on the war front by giving seriously injured people guns. A suffering person often does not think clearly, and this endangers not only civilians but also fellow service members.

The way the U.S. military treats its troops really upsets me. It not only impacts the troops, but also all their friends and loved ones waiting for them at home. It results in the loss of unnecessary lives. This happens through careless actions of service members who now question what the point of living is, and through the countless suicides of those who can no longer handle the despair they live in everyday, and whose pain has been callously ignored. For those waiting at home it is so very difficult to watch your service member suffer every day, wondering if they will have the resolve to make it through yet another day of incredibly high stress and pain with so little hope of relief.

So next Remembrance and Veterans’ Days let us not just make it a day to remember those who have made the ultimate sacrifice. Let us stand up for the rights of those who came home. Let us demand proper treatment for our troops—medical and otherwise. Let us show the world what it really means to support the troops, not unto death alone but also unto life, whatever that may bring for them.

Those who died were willing to fight for those who have come home, that they may live; now let us fight for all those who have come home, that they may continue to live and live with dignity.

The two single most important things they need to be guaranteed as rights are:

1. That no injured combat troops be redeployed unless fully
recovered, in mind as well as in body;

2. That comprehensive medical treatment be provided, at the cost of the military, until full recovery is attained.

I know that it is difficult for American service members to have these rights upheld. I never want that to be the case for Canadian service members. Perhaps with this insight it will compel Canadians to ensure that such treatment never happens with their troops and that they may be more willing to let American War Resisters stay in Canada. After all, I’m sure that if the situation of poor treatment of the military occurred in Canada you would want there to be a place for the suffering service members to turn for help. I hope that Canada can be that place for our family and for others like us.

(Ashlea Brockway lives in Port Colborne with her husband, Iraq war resister Jeremy Brockway, and their two Canadian-born sons.)

(Visit Niagara At Large at www. Niagaraatlarge.com for more news and commentary on matters of interest and concern to our greater binational Niagara region on both sides of the Canada/U.S. border.)