I grew up a military kid. I lived through the Cuban Missile Crisis on a SAC base in central Florida, a 14-year-old proud to be on “the front lines," if only as a military dependent. Coming out of high school, I had a 5th-alternate nomination to West Point – though the Air Force Academy was my real goal. Military service was, I thought, a guarantee that I would live a life devoted to fighting for goodness and truth.

Then something happened: Vietnam. Vietnam tore my generation apart – literally and figuratively. I remember going swimming with a friend in the 70s and seeing three round scars across his chest when he took off his shirt: “Machine gun fire,” he explained; “the Tet Offensive.” We both knew the scars went deeper than flesh, blood and bone, for Vietnam and the mistakes it represented scarred our faith in America. Vietnam was not about military life as I imagined it, it was about militarism: the conviction that military action is a quick and sure solution to complex problems.

After Vietnam, most of America rejected militarism, including many who opted for military life. The lesson was costly, but the price we paid seemed to have dispelled the belief that problems could be solved by throwing guns and bombs at them.

But now it’s come back.

I don’t know if the Gulf War was necessary. It seemed so at the time. Afghanistan? That one’s even harder to call. But Iraq is easy. It was a war started on the basis of cynical deceptions. And even if it had been justified, it was – and remains – catastrophically mismanaged. What was an arid and troubling political landscape has been transformed into a swamp that will breed toxins way beyond any horizon we can see.

And now there’s the challenge of Iran. Facing that hydra-headed monster with militarists at the helm scares the hell out of me – all the more so because I remember the Cuban Crisis, the nightmares of mushroom clouds, and the visions of melted flesh and charred bone that went hand in hand with it.

America has been hijacked by a New Militarism. The lessons learned in Vietnam have been set aside and the new generation that has been made cannon fodder will, like mine, be scarred for life – though in ways we won’t understand for years to come. And that’s not to mention the untold innocents who have been scarred – and worse – as the militarists act out their fantasies.

This country – and its military – deserve more than the dull-witted, self-justifying leadership that hides behind a “war” on terror that never was and never will be a war. And it’s time to say so.

Starting on July 4, I’m going to wear a black wristband each day to express my outrage at the fact that the lessons of Vietnam have been unlearned, the scarring of our national consciousness has begun again, and the young people and innocents who are always on the front lines will pay the heaviest price. Once again we’ve been manacled to a skewed and myopic vision of the world more appropriate to 1936 than to 2006. So I’ll wear my wristband as a symbol: in mourning for the dead and the scarred and the wounded, and in protest against the shackling of American values by the New Militarists.

The wristband comes off when the shackles do. Not before.

June 29, 2006