The Dying Gaul (ca.1st C B.C., Capitoline Museum, Rome; sculptor unknown)
War is good business. Not for everybody, but for the people in the war business. Just take a peek at that trillion-dollar military budget that Republicans keep saying is not enough and Democrats are terrified to question. But it’s also good business to prey upon the sentiments that war evokes; and no sentiment is a powerful and sacrosanct as that of the “wounded warrior.”
The unsolicited phone caller from The Wounded Warrior Project pushed those buttons very well when I foolishly put down my dinner fork to take his call. He upped the guilt level when I told him that I pay my US taxes and I expect that from those taxes my representatives in Washington who vote for our wars and the military budget would see to it that the casualties of those decisions are properly cared for. He continued to list the good words of his organization when I said that I saw no reason for there to be private auspices for the cause of the wounded. He persisted in his attempt to get me to pledge $19 a month, for what I saw would be in perpetuity given that my country seems inclined to conduct war in that timeframe. He would send me a nice Wounded Warriors Project blanket if I signed up.
What he didn’t tell me was that about nine bucks out of that $19 per month contribution would go into his pocket, that of the administration and overhead of the project, and to support further advertising to grow the business. Slick, emotion-tweaking commercials can now be seen regularly on television featuring testimonials from recipient families and some drawling country and western dude in a cowboy hat. Like the war on drugs and Homeland Security, these “wounds” pay off better the longer they fester. This is not a business that intends to put itself out of business. There are a lot of these “charitable” organizations, not all of them as egregiously self-serving as this one (see for example http://www.thepatriotsinitiative.org, which brought to light the questionable charity of the Wounded Warriors Project). Casualties of our numerous and protracted wars deserve the best care the public enterprise can give them. But turning them into a cold-calling businesses that line the pockets of quasi-war profiteers is not the way to do it. A good start would be to end our stupid, imperialistic wars.