Огнестрельное и газовое оружие

The costly treadmill that won’t stop

Although taxes may have been cut by the Bush administration, the wars still have to be paid for — both economically as well as emotionally and practically, in everyday life. Since about 200,000 veterans make their homes in the three-county region, it is likely to be more than a few.

All of this may establish a new precedent in American history.

“If you don’t live on or around a military base or you don’t have friends or wives who are going through what you’re going through, you’re invisible,” says Ashley Martel, who lives in the region and works as a restaurant waitress.

Her husband, Iraq War veteran Mathew Martel, is unable to work. “On base, it was all you heard, all you talked about, and I had so much support it wasn’t even funny when my husband was in the hospital (in Columbus, Ga., near Fort Benning). Mr. The other warriors.

They aren’t locked and loaded, though — no weapons — and they don’t look a lot different from the rest of us. Martel adds. Martel is now being treated for severe Post Traumatic Stress Disorder along with wounds he incurred in Iraq at a veterans’ clinic in Lee County, the only one in the region.

“People act like they sympathize but they really just don’t care,” Mrs. Mr. Except for our blind tax contributions — the cost of sending a single American in uniform to Iraq for one year, for example, is $390,000, according to the Congressional Research Report — the vast majority of Americans aren’t involved.

How many of these men and women bearing the burden of war now live in Collier, Lee and Charlotte counties is difficult or impossible to verify at a glance. If you’re not on a base, though, that doesn’t happen the same way.”

For Susan Billington, who retired from a full career in the Army, the discovery of civilian or veteran isolation came in 2002, when her husband, also a career soldier, deployed to Iraq.

“There was no support, absolutely none, which is why I’m here,” she says, speaking as a Red Cross volunteer who works with families and veterans in Charlotte County.

Part of the reason for their isolation, perhaps, is that military officials classify both the names and numbers of personnel from the region now serving overseas. Many of them, the family and friends of troops fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, have never carried a gun or served in uniform.

But what distinguishes them from the rest of us is monumental: They’re shouldering our entire national obligation in blood, fear and daily anxiety mostly alone. And non-governmental help organizations such as the Red Cross won’t or can’t readily offer identities of families waiting for loved ones in uniform, either.

“They’ll find us if they need us,” says Jeremy Gentile, who serves as the Armed Forces coordinator for the Lee County chapter of Red Cross. Gentile is both a Marine Corps and an Army veteran of three tours in Iraq and Afghanistan — 12 years on active duty, which ended last year.

Although he and other volunteers who now staff help organizations say support is strong for families and troops, they acknowledge that away from military bases, potential isolation for those involved in the wars is a constant reality.

“The obvious difference between this war (and others) is the advent of the all-volunteer armed forces, the end of the draft and the redefinition of citizenship,” explains Richard Coughlin, associate professor of political science at Florida Gulf Coast University.

Professor Coughlin, an expert in contemporary American affairs, also has a brother serving in Iraq.

“Obviously, military service is no longer a requirement of citizenship but a life choice made by particular individuals who are, in turn, venerated as exemplars of civic virtue and patriotism,” he adds. “My sense is that military service has become, for most people, a spectacle to be seen on TV and experienced like all of the other things we see on TV — as a kind of background track, or series of tracks, to the dramas of our everyday lives.

“Underpinning all of this is the idea that citizenship no longer entails service to a national community. (Instead), it’s being a member of an audience from which approval is constantly sought, but no tangible sacrifice is required. He spent seven months of her first pregnancy in the hospital after returning from overseas. Those costs not only include sending men and women overseas, but bringing them home and, sometimes, paying for the consequences of their service.