The most famous instance was when, after seventeen years of being blacklisted, Seeger was invited to appear on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. CBS censored his song, "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy,” which was about a gung-ho captain who forces his men to ford a raging river only to be drowned himself in its muddy currents. The song was a thinly veiled -- and prophetic -- metaphor of President Lyndon Johnson’s Vietnam policies. The censoring of Seeger created a public outcry. The network relented and invited him back later that season to sing his protest.

For seventeen years Seeger had been blacklisted from radio and television, which made it all the more ironic that he was honored by the Kennedy Center with its Lifetime Achievement Honor in 1994. When President Clinton presented that award he said some people are famous in the history of music, but Pete Seeger made history with his music.

Bill Clinton was right. Seeger made history. He had written a number of folk songs over the years for the peace movement, but “Bring ‘Em Home” is probably his best. Squashing the criticism that those against the war didn’t support the troops, Seeger sang: “If you love your Uncle Sam, bring ‘em home, bring ’em home.” Seeger was right about Vietnam in the 60s and his lyrics ring eerily true today about Afghanistan.

It’ll make our generals sad, I know,

Bring “em home, bring “em home.

They want to tangle with the foe,

Bring ‘em home, bring ‘em home.


They want to test their weaponry,

Bring ‘em home, bring ‘em home.

But here is their big fallacy,

Bring ‘em home, bring ‘em home.


The world needs teachers, books and schools,

Bring ‘em home, bring ‘em home.

And learning a few universal rules,

Bring ‘em home, bring ‘em home.


However, I want to raise two critical questions: What happens to our troops after we bring them home? And what happens to the country they leave behind?

Last month in the New York Times, Nancy Sherman, University Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown and former Distinguished Chair in Ethics at the U. S. Naval Academy wrote “A Crack in the Stoic’s Armor.” Many military veterans who until now have been stoic and unemotional about their true feelings regarding war “wish to let go of the Stoic armor.”

The veterans, Sherman wrote, “Wanted to feel and process the loss. They wanted to register the complex inner moral landscape of war by finding some measure of empathy with their own emotion. One retired Army major put it flatly to me, ‘I’ve been sucking it up for 25 years, and I’m tired of it.’ For some, like this officer, the war after the war is unrelenting.”

Sherman admits that all veterans are not suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), but many are. The Army’s own studies estimate that it affects one in eight of those who served in Iraq and Afghanistan -- and few are receiving adequate help.

Recently CBS News asked Dr. Ira Katz, Director of Mental Health for the Department of Veterans Affairs, for the statistics on veteran suicides. He would not provide it. “The research is ongoing,” Katz said.

So CBS News did their own investigation asking each state for its suicide data for veterans and non-veterans dating back to 1995. What it revealed was astonishing. In 2005, for example, there were 6256 suicides among veterans. That was 120 each week in just one year. In that year veterans were more than twice as likely to suicide than non-veterans. The rates were even higher among young veterans in the 20 – 24 year-old age group.

120 veteran suicides every week. My God, that’s a major epidemic! Is that what we’re bringing them home to? And that’s not counting suicide attempts, addictions, divorces and the spouse-abuse caused by PTSD. The Veteran Administration is overwhelmed and is not providing the psychological services these wounded warriors need. Shame on us for that injustice.

That brings me to my second question. What happens to Afghanistan when we leave? The short answer is it will be there just as it was before: a narco state, with a corrupt, weak, divided, tribal government. General David Petraeus has called Afghanistan the “graveyard of empires.” Even with 110,000 troops the Russians, were unsuccessful! What makes us think we will succeed where Alexander the Great, the British and Russians have failed?

Moreover, Al Qaeda will not return from Pakistan to reconstitute itself in Afghanistan. Al Qaeda has moved on. It’s not only in Pakistan. Like a cancer it has metastasized. Sadly it’s all over the world.

Since 2001 we’ve spent roughly $65 billion a year in Afghanistan. Can we afford that? That would pay for countless “teachers, books and schools.” But more importantly can we afford to ignore the psychological needs of our veterans or the increasing number of military deaths? As Pete Seeger would sing,

Oh, when will they ever learn?

When will they ever learn?


Retired from the Administration at State University of New York at Fredonia, Daniel O’Rourke lives in Cassadaga, NY. His newspaper column appears in the Observer, Dunkirk, NY on the second and fourth Thursday each month. A grandfather, Dan is a married Catholic priest. He has published a book of his previous columns "The Spirit at Your Back.” To read about the book or send comments on this column visit his website http://www.danielcorourke.com/