A Handful of Words from Writer Alison Buckholtz Puts Coverage of the Petraeus-Broadwell-Allen-Kelley Matter into Perspective — a Comment regarding Ethical Complacence and War

© 2012 Peter Free

 

14 November 2012

 

 

Pertinent disclaimer

 

I am a military spouse — and have been for a long and stressful time.

 

Writer Alison Bucholtz is too.

 

 

Alison Buckholtz said all that needs to be said about the Petraeus-Broadwell-Allen-Kelley matter

 

From today’s Slate magazine (re-formatted for easier reading):

 

[F]ew military spouses believe that adultery is worthy of the tabloid-like headlines it has received during the last few days, particularly if there are no national security issues at stake . . . .

 

 

Not only do none of us want our marriage parsed by others, but we hear the profound truth in the Onion’s recent headline, “Nation Horrified to Learn About War in Afghanistan While Reading Up On Petraeus Sex Scandal.”

 

 

Ten years of combat, and this is what grabs America’s attention?

 

 

As a military spouse, I wish the spotlight would fall on the real tragedies and crises military families face every day. They don’t require FBI investigations or White House notification.

 

 

Simply drive down the main road at Walter Reed Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Md. (or any local VA hospital), where a young man whose body consists of a head and a torso blows into a straw to steer himself through the crosswalk on the way into the hospital.

 

 

This is where the reporters should be.

 

 

Stop by the base post office, where a young man, face down on a stretcher, waits in a line for his mail. Step over to Dunkin Donuts, where another young man with four prosthetic limbs attempts to hand the cashier a $5 bill, which keeps slipping out of his metal claw.  Pass a young veteran in a wheelchair trying to push his infant’s stroller with one hand while wheeling himself forward with the other.

 

 

In this city of amputees, and in the scores of American towns that will house and attempt to heal them for decades to come, the dirtiest secret of wartime is already out in the open, for everyone to see.

 

 

© 2012 Alison Buckholtz, What Military Spouses Know About Infidelity, Slate (14 November 2012)

 

 

The moral? — Ongoing, but disregarded war is an ethical obscenity

 

In this era of perennial American war, only moral nitwits should be diverted by superficial stories about powerful people’s alleged infidelities.

 

Each day I awake to wonder who is going to fall next, if my wife is destined to be among them, and whether this nation is ever going return to seeing war as being ethically justified only in the last (and wisely chosen) resort.