Chances are that veterans this past week have heard a phrase of gratitude thanking them for their service.
While we live in a time when Americans widely respect veterans for our service, that doesn’t mean that military service is understood, especially wartime service. War is an experience that is difficult to understand unless you’ve been there.
Now that we are past Veterans Day, what can community members do to extend that simple phrase of “thank you for your service,” to a more meaningful expression of acknowledgement and support?
One way is a profound opportunity to listen and learn. This Saturday, Nov. 15, there will be a film screening of “What I Want You To Know,” a 2023 documentary about the experiences of Post-9/11 military veterans in wars that many Americans would just as soon forget. The public is invited.
The film, an intimate journey alongside 13 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, will be shown at the Unitarian Society of Northampton and Florence, starting at 6 p.m. The film looks at their experiences from the lens of joining the military to fight back after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and with the notion they would be helping to build democracy in war-torn countries.
What then happens is the focus of the film. It not only addresses the terror of combat but also the difficulties of readjusting when service members return home and must live with the ongoing wounds of war, which can include moral injury.
Moral injury describes a service member’s response to their actions in war in perpetrating, failing to prevent, bearing witness to, or learning about acts that transgress deeply held moral beliefs and expectations.
Or more simply put, it’s the psychological wound and suffering that comes from having taken an action — or not prevented an action — that is a betrayal of one’s core moral values or deeply held ethical beliefs.
The documentary is especially powerful in how it provides an unflinching look at our nation’s role in these “forever wars.” The film closely examines the shared feelings of betrayal from those who fought these wars — a sense that our nation’s political and military leaders failed them.
Anyone who joins the military “is demonstrating a willingness to sacrifice their life for their country,” says Marine Corps veteran Sarah Feinberg in the film. Feinberg deployed to Iraq in 2009. “I think our politicians and our military leaders have a responsibility to, at a minimum, tell the truth on what we’re doing.”
Despite the trauma and pain caused by these wars, the film shows that many veterans care deeply about the military and in the oath they took to defend our country. In one scene, military recruits are raising their right hands and repeating the oath of enlistment. This film, therefore, makes clear that we must talk about the consequences of war and the public’s willingness to send young people off to wars we don’t need to fight, or we will repeat the same mistakes.
If it were up to me, I’d ask every elected leader in Congress to view this film before sending Americans overseas to fight in any future war that doesn’t have a clear mission or an end state. It should be “just in time” viewing, therefore before more military action is taken in Venezuela or Nigeria.
With a VA medical center in Northampton that specializes in post-traumatic stress, I hope that VA clinicians will watch the film, too. Ok, I’ll just say it: anyone with a heart for veterans should watch it.
Following the screening on Nov. 15, I will moderate a discussion with the film’s director Catie Foertsch and Tommy Furlong, a Marine Corps veteran and one of the film’s executive producers.
We hope to engage the audience in ways to connect veterans with the community by going beyond merely thanking someone for their service. Listening to what veterans want us to know is an important step in fostering belonging and reconnection, which is the antidote to the moral injury and alienation many veterans suffer.
Join me in watching the film this Saturday. I have not seen a previous documentary of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that has so closely captured what service members experienced.
It provides a vehicle for citizens to listen, without judgment, to what veterans experienced in times of war, and should be an addendum to any Veterans Day commemoration.
Only by listening and only by finding empathy with their service can we even begin to understand what veterans carry and begin to truly contemplate the consequences of future wars.
John Paradis, a retired lieutenant colonel in the Air Force, lives in Florence. Paradis served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Anyone wanting to see “What I Want You To Know,” can attend the 6 p.m. showing on Nov. 15. RSVPs will be accepted by going to Mobilize.Us, and typing in the title of the film in the search engine.