There is an old episode of Star Trek, “A Taste of Armageddon,” that has stayed with me because it so clearly exposes something we still struggle to admit about war.

Captain Kirk arrives on a planet whose people claim they have been at war for generations. Yet there are no bombed buildings, shattered infrastructure, wounded civilians, or visible battlefields. The war has been computerized. Attacks are simulated, casualties are calculated, and those declared dead report to disintegration chambers to be killed. Society continues functioning because the destruction of war has been removed from everyday life.

Kirk destroys the system. If they want to keep fighting, they will now have to experience actual war. Otherwise, they will have to negotiate.

The episode understood something profound: war becomes easier to tolerate when people are insulated from its consequences.

We have not computerized war, but we have become remarkably good at keeping its consequences outside the frame. We do it by keeping destruction geographically distant, presenting military service primarily in terms of what it offers, and treating the long-term consequences borne by veterans as a separate problem rather than as part of the original cost of war.

When War Happens Somewhere Else

For most people in the United States, war happens somewhere else.

Other people’s neighborhoods are destroyed. Other families dig through rubble looking for loved ones. Other children learn what explosions sound like. Other hospitals lose power. Other communities are displaced.

Our streets remain intact.

September 11 showed, in a terrible way, how human beings respond when political violence suddenly becomes intimate. People searched desperately for loved ones, ran from collapsing buildings, and dug through debris for the missing. For a brief moment, images we normally associate with violence somewhere else were ours.

Imagine living with that possibility repeatedly.

Imagine rebuilding a neighborhood knowing it may be destroyed again. Imagine sending children to school while wondering whether the building will still be standing that afternoon. Imagine learning to distinguish the sound of one weapon from another.

It becomes much harder to romanticize war when the building being destroyed could be yours.

Selling the Beginning of the Story

The sanitization begins long before anyone reaches a battlefield. It begins with how military service is presented.

“Be All You Can Be.”

“Aim High.”

“Enrich Your Life.”

Education. Housing. Healthcare. Career training. Bonuses. Travel. Adventure. Leadership. Camaraderie.

Those benefits are real. That is not my criticism.

The problem is that these incentives are immediately understood, whereas the costs of service are uncertain, individualized, and often not fully visible until years later.

The recruiting message overwhelmingly answers one question:

What can the military give you?

But it gives far less attention to an equally important one:

What can the military require from you?

College is expensive. Healthcare is expensive. Housing is difficult. Young adults are trying to establish careers and financial stability. Then the military offers education, medical care, housing, training, steady income, and sometimes enormous bonuses.

For many people, those benefits are not superficial. They can be life-changing.

But an eighteen or twenty year old can understand tuition assistance or a signing bonus much more easily than they can understand deployment, chronic pain, family separation, psychological injury, or the possibility that military service may affect them decades later.

The Blank Check

I recently had a conversation with a young man in his late twenties who was considering military service. He already had a bachelor’s degree and was thinking about becoming an officer.

I did not tell him not to join.

I told him to understand his why.

What are you running from? What are you running toward? What do you expect the military to provide? What are you willing to give in return?

I have described military service for years as signing a blank check.

You sign your name before you know what will eventually be written on it.

Your time. Your location. Separation from family. Your physical health. Your psychological well-being. Your participation in violence. Possibly your life.

Most people who serve will not experience direct combat. I did not. But nobody who raises their right hand gets to decide whether that will remain true. The commitment comes before the government decides how, where, or whether to use you.

That is the blank check.

Sanitizing War

War itself is sanitized in much the same way.

Targets. Strikes. Operations. Collateral damage. Fallen. Sacrifice.

Then we give those abstractions meaning.

Honor. Duty. Courage. Victory. Patriotism.

There is real courage in military service. There is real sacrifice. The bonds between service members can be extraordinary. What I miss most about my own time in uniform is the camaraderie.

But courage can be honorable without war itself being glorious.

We should be able to respect the person without romanticizing the machinery that placed that person in harm’s way.

And when questioning a war becomes framed as questioning one’s loyalty to the country, the moral question changes. Instead of asking whether the killing is necessary, whether the objectives are clear, or whether alternatives exist, the discussion becomes a test of patriotism.

Those are not the same questions.

The Hierarchy of Sacrifice

We also create a strange hierarchy of sacrifice after service ends.

Before you join, every role matters. During service, everyone contributes to the mission. Afterward, people begin asking whether you served in combat, whether your injury was serious enough, whether your disability really counts, or whether someone else sacrificed more.

But the service member did not decide where the government sent them or what risks they ultimately faced.

The obligation existed either way.

The surrender of autonomy existed either way.

The readiness existed either way.

The government should not celebrate everyone’s commitment while they are useful to the mission and then begin measuring whose sacrifice counted enough once the uniform comes off.

Where the Bill Comes Due

Then comes the VA.

I spent seven years examining and evaluating VA systems and processes as part of my professional work. I am also a disabled veteran who receives VA care. I have seen the system both from inside the institution and as someone who depends on it.

While someone is serving, money spent on training, healthcare, housing, equipment, relocation, and support is treated as necessary for military readiness.

After separation, many of the consequences of that service become costs to be managed.

Now there are disability claims, eligibility determinations, priority groups, examinations, appeals, long-term healthcare, mental health treatment, rehabilitation, and obligations that can continue for decades.

Before I had a disability rating, I once sought VA care when I had no health insurance. I was turned away. Later, after receiving a substantial disability rating, my access changed dramatically.

That experience taught me something many civilians do not realize: military service by itself does not guarantee the simple, unconditional access to VA care that many people assume follows the uniform.

The VA is not separate from war. It is where part of the human bill for military service eventually arrives.

A nation does not incur the cost of war only when it funds an operation or launches a weapon. It incurs that cost when it asks people to enter service, exposes them to risk, and accepts responsibility for the consequences that follow them home.

The Full Lifecycle of War

What this sanitized view of war keeps outside the frame is the whole chain:

• The recruiting advertisement.
• The bonus.
• The uniform.
• The friendships.
• The deployment.
• The weapon.
• The civilian on the other end of the weapon.
• The returning veteran.
• The disability claim.
• The VA waiting room.
• The consequences twenty years later.
• These are not separate stories.
• They are the lifecycle of war.

A Taste of Armageddon understood that war becomes easier to tolerate when its consequences are separated from the people who authorize it, support it, or live comfortably beyond its reach.

Institutions make that separation possible, but the public also bears responsibility when we accept that distance without questioning what is being done in our name.

If we were required to see the entire lifecycle at once, the recruit, the family, the battlefield, the civilian on the other end of the weapon, the injury, the claim, the waiting room, and the decades that follow, war might be much harder to glorify.

And if we are going to ask young people to sign a blank check to their country, the least we owe them is an honest accounting of everything that may eventually be written on it.