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TechnoratiHeal the Warrior, Heal the Country
Breaking the cycle of war making: our country will not find peace until we take responsibility for our wars.
A veteran with Iraq Veterans Against the War marches in New York on the 5th anniversary of the U.S. war in Iraq.
Photo by Joseph O. Holmes
Guilt, shame, slaughter without purpose, alienation from homeland and life itself-this was the legacy that Günter passed on to his son Walt from his World War II combat service in Hitler's Wehrmacht. Walt, "the only child born in freedom," was born in the United States shortly after his parents emigrated here from Germany. Growing up in the Cold War 1950s, Walt longed to be an all-American boy, but was always the Indian to his friends' cowboys and the "Kraut" to their G.I. Joes.When he turned 18, Walt enlisted and volunteered for Vietnam. "I wanted to finally be one of the good guys," Walt said. "Service in the American military in a righteous cause would expunge my family's past and earn our place in society." He could not know that, instead, he would return with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), feeling less than ever like "one of the good guys."
The Warrior's Path
Our troops do not enlist because they want to destroy or kill. No matter the political climate, most troops seek to serve traditional warrior values: to protect the country they love, its ideals, and especially their families, communities, and each other. If they must kill or be killed, they need transcendent reasons to do so. Throughout history, the only reason for fighting that has survived moral scrutiny is a direct attack with real, immediate threat to one's people. PTSD is, in part, the tortured conscience of good people who did their best under conditions that would dehumanize anyone.
Almost all cultures, past and present, have had warriors. They have also had complex stories and rituals to help them recover from combat and guide them through the life cycle. The occurrence of warriors is so universal that depth psychologists understand Warrior to be one of our foundational psycho-spiritual archetypes.
Most conventional therapies teach healers to avoid talk of morality. But war is inherently a moral enterprise and veterans in search of healing are on a profound moral journey. Healers and communities must walk with them.
In traditional cultures, boys and men studied a "warrior's path." In these societies a warrior was not the same as a soldier; not merely a member of a huge, anonymous military institution used for the violent execution of political ends. Rather, warrior was one of the foundational roles that kept societies whole and strong. Warriors were fundamentally protectors, not destroyers.
People respond to the same call today. Michael, a Marine who served in Afghanistan, proudly declares that at age 18 he was the first in his state to enlist after 9/11. Nick, an army officer who served in Iraq, enlisted because of a lifelong desire "to be like Hector defending the gates of Troy."
Warriorhood, however, is not so valued or nurtured in modern society. "Warrior" is not even a recognized social class. A veteran, especially one with disabilities, appears to many, and sometimes to him or herself, as a failure in terms of normal civilian identity. Michael fears that, as an experienced combat veteran, the only place on the planet he now fits is in the French Foreign Legion.
The Echoes of War
War abroad fosters war at home. When we go to war, we inevitably bring its violence and horror back to our homes and streets. We cannot help it.Rather than feeling that he had restored his family's honor, Walt spent years ravaged by nightmares, homeless, abusing drugs and alcohol, and sitting with a shotgun in his mouth trying to find the will to end it all. He married and had children, then divorced and neglected his kids. He could not keep a job. He could not come home.
War echoes down the generations. Known or hidden, we all carry the wounds of war. Walt was wounded by his father's history. His children were wounded by his.
When a veteran has PTSD, his or her entire family and community are inevitably affected. The individual symptoms of PTSD-sleep disturbances, substance abuse, depression, and problems with intimacy, employment and authority-are the same symptoms that are epidemic in our society. When we take a close and unprotected look, we see: We are a nation and a planet of wounded warriors, their offspring, and their neighbors.
Cleansing the Warrior
War poisons the spirit, and warriors return tainted. This is why, among Native American, Zulu, Buddhist, ancient Israeli, and other traditional cultures, returning warriors were put through significant rituals of purification before re-entering their families and communities. Traditional cultures recognized that unpurified warriors could, in fact, be dangerous. The absence of these rituals in modern society helps explain why suicide, homicide, and other destructive acts are common among veterans.
In Viet Nam Walt had exhumed bodies of enemy dead from mass graves and reburied them. He felt like he had dirtied and damaged his soul. Nick declared that, though he had wished to be a great champion of his people, "all they gave me was this dirty stinking little Iraq War."
In traditional cultures, warrior cleansing was often guided by shamans, and particular shamans presided over "warrior medicine." Among his many offices and honors, for example, Sitting Bull served as Medicine Chief of the Hunkpapa Warrior Society, responsible for overseeing the spiritual lives and well-being of the society's warriors. Sitting Bull considered this to be the most important of all the offices he held.
Walt entered individual and group psychotherapy for combat veterans. It helped to tell his stories, have his feelings and losses confirmed by other vets, and receive honor as part of a brotherhood. But he was in search of more cleansing, blessing, and soul healing than traditional therapy could provide. He eventually partnered with a Native American woman. He studied her culture, and participated in sweat lodges and other traditional rituals. He attended a Pow Wow where he was honored as a returned warrior. He was accepted by the Native community far more than he had been by mainstream America.
I annually lead healing journeys back to Viet Nam, and there, too, vets report feeling more welcomed and honored by their former foes than they have ever felt at home.
A Double Wound
Sitting Bull and his warriors, and other bands from innumerable traditional cultures, were never plagued with self-doubt about the value of their mission, as many of our soldiers are today. In order to do battle with a whole heart, the danger and threat to one's home must be real, and the people must experience it as immediate and about to threaten their total existence; there must be no alternative. A people and their warriors must be in unity.The effect of that unity shows in Nguyen Van Tam, known as Mr. Tiger, a robust, friendly, and serene man of 87 living in Viet Nam's Mekong Delta. He is a veteran of wars against the Japanese, French, and Americans. Though at war for a quarter century, he has no disturbing symptoms. "We Vietnamese," he says, "do not have PTSD because we never hated Americans. We only fought to protect our families and homes from invaders."
When, to the contrary, wars are based on false pretenses, a moral vacuum results. As Martin Luther King Jr. observed, troops then experience "not simply the brutalizing process that goes on in any war," but also "cynicism to the process of death, for our troops must know after a short time that none of the things we are fighting for are really involved."
Walt explained, "I didn't realize until it was too late that I was just like my father-a good man fighting on the wrong side for the wrong cause." Moral trauma is at the core of PTSD. An idealistic and sincere young soldier discovering that he is in fact fighting for false or distorted political, economic, or historical agendas can experience deeper and more complicated psychic wounds than those traditional warriors experienced.
The severity and extent to which veterans suffer with Post-traumatic Stress Disorder is a direct response to our culture's blindness about war's true cost. PTSD is the expression of the anguish, dislocation, and rage of the self as it attempts to cope with its loss of innocence, reformulate a new personal identity and cultural role, and awaken from massive denial. Veterans with PTSD are people whose belief systems have been shattered. We can better understand PTSD as an identity disorder and soul wound rather than a stress and anxiety disorder, as it is presently classified. War dehumanizes anyone it touches, but especially a veteran who questions the cause he served.
Most conventional therapies teach healers to avoid talk of morality. But war is inherently a moral enterprise and veterans in search of healing are on a profound moral journey. Healers and communities must walk with them. As a society, we must honor those wounds in ways that recognize their depth and degree of psychic suffering.
If we are to return war to its proper place as a last defense when absolutely necessary, we must heal the wounds of our soldiers and communities. We cannot achieve peace-making without first achieving true and comprehensive war-healing.
Lifting the Burden
Warriors in traditional societies served the need for protection, and all that was done was done in the tribe's name. They had rituals transferring responsibility for actions during warfare from veterans to the entire culture. Ultimately leaders, not ordinary troops, were held responsible for the results of battle and for the deaths that occurred.
Our veterans cannot heal unless society accepts responsibility for its war making. To the veteran, our leaders and people must say, "You did this in our name, because you were subject to our orders, and because we put you in untenable and even atrocity-producing situations. We lift the burden of your actions from you and take it onto our shoulders. We are responsible for you, for what you did, and for the consequences."
Walt received this acceptance from Native American communities. In my seven trips to Viet Nam, and with every veteran and civilian I have met who has visited Viet Nam since the war, the Vietnamese people have offered such acceptance and forgiveness to any American returning to the country to reconcile. In contrast, since Afghanistan, Michael says, "I still love America, but America does not love me."
Without this transfer of responsibility, the veteran carries war's secret grief and guilt for us all. Too many veterans collapse into a silent suffering disability and thus serve as our broken scapegoats while the rest of us proceed with "business as usual." In contrast, during my healing retreats, veterans tell their stories, civilians speak of their lost loved ones, and everyone shares their damaged values and broken dreams. Finally, our vets enter the center of our circle and civilians pledge to accept responsibility for any harm done in their name and to help carry the veterans' stories for the rest of their lives. By sharing this burden we become a community united in service to war-healing.
Healing for All
We wish, as the gospel song says, "to study war no more." But scholars count over 14,600 wars in the last 5,600 years of recorded history. War is so epidemic in its occurrence, devastating in its impact, and lasting in its aftermath, that we must study it and tend to it and treat it. If we are to return war to its proper place as a last defense when absolutely necessary, we must heal the wounds of our soldiers and communities. We cannot achieve peace-making without first achieving true and comprehensive war-healing.Walt finally put away his shotgun and quit drinking. He enjoyed a successful relationship with his new partner and was adopted by her tribe and its warrior society. He took up a spiritual path that restored his belief in the goodness of life and order of the universe. He volunteered with more disabled veterans, visiting the infirm at his regional V.A. hospital and helping create annual veteran reunions. Both in therapy and beyond, we created rituals that allowed this soldier to find healing. The Native American and veteran communities helped support and bring this warrior's wandering spirit home. In turn, Walt became a devoted advocate for other veterans more wounded than he. The disabled veteran became an elder warrior.
But war completed its damage. Only in his 50s, Walt died of Agent Orange-related cancer last year.
We cannot heal from war without involving the entire community and society, and without invoking transpersonal help. We must develop modern rituals that acknowledge the additional wounds caused by war fought for non-defense reasons. Much as we might disagree with a war, our rituals must include purification, public storytelling, and community acceptance of responsibility for what the soldier has done.
These war-healing rituals and practices serve us all. They bring home to us the need to break the cycles of war-making and violence both within the individual soldier and within the society. When we return to our veterans their silenced voices, when we accept our true responsibility as individuals and communities, we will no longer see war as an adventure or a legitimate tool of power politics. Then, perhaps, we may see that all over our country and world, we share the same legacy of war-wounding. When we join together to address those wounds wherever they appear, we will finally "study war no more."
I asked Walt's permission to tell his story during our farewell visit in the hospital where he was dying of Agent Orange cancers. He was surprised at first, but finally said, "I was afraid my life was worthless. But please tell my story. Please make it mean something. Maybe it can help some other poor souls avoid my fate."
Edward Tick wrote this article as part of A Just Foreign Policy, the Summer 2008 issue of YES! Magazine. Edward is author of War and the Soul and three other books. He has worked with veterans for three decades and is director and senior psychotherapist of Soldier's Heart: Veteran's Safe Return Initiatives.
www.soldiersheart.net.
© 2008 YES! Magazine
25 Comments so far
Show All"I learned very quickly that wars were carried out only for conquest and for surpressing other populations. You clowns are what Williams Carlos Williams wrote about in Imperialism as a way of life. You do not have any basis for assessing the world except your own petty minds. You need to stop the nonsense of believing the military is anything but puppets of an imperial America. Anyone who is in the military now is a psychopath or a loser, and those of you who are in favor of the war should join today. What is keeping you? You are fools and cowards who want to sit home and let the psychopaths kill Iraquis that you seem to care nothing about because you support those who are in Iraq killing women and children. The only people we need to honor are those innocents Iraqis who are killed. I leave you with two unanswerabel points that you would consider if you were intelligent enough to do so."
Thank you Joseph Morton for speaking the truth. Nothing can change until truth replaces all the lies of the empire and forces those who feel protected by those lies to admit their hypocrisy, weakness, perversity, fears, greed, arrogance, ... etc.
I respect josephmorton for his brutal honesty. To the poster who feels that he is suffering from PTSD (I don't know if that's true, I'm not a physician), how do you think you are helping by ridiculing him? I reject the cult of the warrior as one poster correctly put it. One poster was suggesting that Katrina victims should be grateful for the water the military was handing out to the victims. Not to smack a gift horse in the mouth, but the military treated New Orleans like Baghdad. They had their weapons pointed at the civilians. They saw the suffering but acted so indifferent. General Honore (God Bless him) berated the soldiers for pointing weapons at the civilians and shouted at the soldiers to "put their goddamn weapons down!" He didn't want to see civilians treated in that fashion. What decent human would? If we were really serious about helping veterans, we might start by respecting differing opinions like josephmorton instead of slamming him as racist and this and that. I'm a veteran, and while there were a few people that were pretty cool, many acted like a bunch of mindless drones never questioning anything. Is that what we want? To josephmorton: while your honesty is brutal, it's refreshing. Thanks!
The title of the article says it all--this is not just about helping our military veterans, it is about redirecting our own energies into a more positive direction.
Fuck all soldiers!!
They bought into the lies, so let them live the results.
They could have worked at MacDonalds like the rest of us.
josephmorton, what brigade, what battalion? You are a victim of PTSD, so clear in your self-hatred by your hatred of Vets. You have never been treated, you need it badly. You indeed are NOT a Warrior, you are a Provocateur. Are your children serving in the illegal Occupation of Iraq or are they in Afghanistan? So if the people you served with were so uneducated and stupid, what does that make you? You are a racist as well. You got it all goin' on bra'. Try vfp.org, ivaw.org and vvaw.org, we do not judge and you need hardcore help ASAP before you harm someone.
"Much as we might disagree with a war, our rituals must include purification, public storytelling, and community acceptance of responsibility for what the soldier has done."
That's absurd! Those responsible are those responsible. And many, possibly even most share some responsibility.
This includes all who have supported the war-making institutions in society (including schools that teach false histories and help condition young would be soldiers) but it certainly does not include me. Sorry. I am NOT at fault and I do indeed find this sort of nonsense underhanded, extremely deceitful and useless to all concerned.
I doubt that Goebbels himself could have written a 'better' article on the subject… sounds all progressive and liberal and in fact is a great apology and proponent for elevating a cult of the warrior… we've certainly been down this road repeatedly throughout history and IT IS THE WRONG DIRECTION!
Warrior? 'Protector'? Indeed!… Of whom? Today's kings and queens, and their elite servants?
Or those genocided ?
We can pass responsibility until no one is at fault… for the pools of blood everywhere forming and formed in times prior all around the world.
Genocide is ugly. It is unnatural. It requires concerted planning and grand deceptions to pull off… and it requires years to condition soldiers to be willing to do the killing. There is a great deal of focus, social focus required for all of this to occur.
This article is the WRONG direction! What's the right direction? Let the soldiers speak. Don't gag them! Let all of their activities and the reasons for them and the results of them be publicized. Hear them.
'War' (genocide) is disgusting and just like slaughterhouses, if all acts could be fully witnessed by the greater society, war (and other forms of slaughter) would be no more.
We don't need to elevate the role of the butcher in society and we DON"T NEED TO ELEVATE THE ROLE OF THE KILLER of innocent people to some kind of sacred status!
The truth is the soldier's best friend. Let him understand the path to war a little better (and thus his own path). And, may this writer also understand the path to war a little better for next year's war is getting its finishing touches in military planning centers (and the corporations and universities that serve these interests) as we type.
"We cannot achieve peace-making without first achieving true and comprehensive war-healing."
Nonsense!
We can ONLY achieve peace by realizing that THE WARRIOR CULT IS THE REASON FOR ALL WAR; always was and always will be.
This is what needs understanding... how completely unnatural the appearance and rise of the warrior cult was in ancient cultures and how strong and pervasive its stranglehold on today's corporate society is...
"Warriors in traditional societies served the need for protection, and all that was done was done in the tribe's name. They had rituals transferring responsibility for actions during warfare from veterans to the entire culture. Ultimately leaders, not ordinary troops, were held responsible for the results of battle and for the deaths that occurred.
Our veterans cannot heal unless society accepts responsibility for its war making. To the veteran, our leaders and people must say, "You did this in our name, because you were subject to our orders, and because we put you in untenable and even atrocity-producing situations. We lift the burden of your actions from you and take it onto our shoulders. We are responsible for you, for what you did, and for the consequences.""
Encouraging mindless soldiers, forgiven for any act, is not a social asset. And another people's society should not be turned into a canned shoot for madmen simply because they have the means to do it... which has happened too many times in the past few centuries!
And warfare is not about protection of any society but about extending elite rule. Certainly the greater society that encourages youth or offers them no other opportunities is at fault, but, in a war-making society such as this one...
Decisions are by a corporate elite and the purposes are consolidation of power for fun and profit... killing is also a sport (including killing of humans) that amuses the power elite and involves those who execute their orders, the soldiers...
I believe that creating the cult of the warrior (by the most ancient temple societies) was the first and primal mistake that ushered in a turning from all that is inherently human and thus natural.
And it began with creating a myth, an artificial cultural script, to be used to train warriors from the time they were very young children. These future warriors were first taught to kill small animals and desensitized by repeated activities along these lines in which their peers helped encourage them to commit acts of violence and cruelty.
Men are not by nature war-makers. (In fact, humans are not natural killers of any thing, because we are natural herbivores.) Man the warrior is simply a fallacy and creation of an unnatural and thus artificial culture in the same way that man the meat-eater is.
___________
"By deception you will make war."
What was 9/11? What was the set-up to demonize Saddam and the Iraqi people? (All orchestrated by careful and thorough secret service standardized procedures for fomenting 'war'/genocide)
And no matter how killing is sold, it remains a very unnatural act for anyone.
That the Iraq genocide (not war) and the Afghanistan genocide (not war) and the Philippine genocide (not war) and the Vietnam, Laos, Cambodian and Thai genocides have served no purpose other than to de-vitalize a region and its people should indicate the real reason for all this propaganda.
Warriors must awaken. Just as the rest of us inside this completely unnatural war-maker's culture must. We must identify what is at the root of our dis-associative behaviors and personalities and remedy those... soon... for it is this dis-associative and deceitful elitist lifestyle in which we are engaged that has defined and scripted a planet consumed by violence... and dying.
Violence is a program to devitalize some and transfer resource management and privilege to others. That is the reason for war.
Healing soldiers begins with recognizing the role we all have in forcing such a horrific lifestyle into being in the first place. Seek the truth and it will set you free… first and foremost from committing ALL unnatural acts of violence.
http://allinharmony.org
I too returned from Vietnam combat with PTSD. At that time (1971), the condition was just starting to be understood, and accepted. However, there was no VA outreach for veterans suffering from it, nor was it being spoken of in the media. The result was going through life not knowing what was wrong.
It is embarrassing to admit, but I was unable to complete by second, back-to-back tour. I was called into a meeting with a chaplain, my division officer, my commanding officer and the head of medicine, at the local Army hospital. They were a somber group. My division officer, with whom I had a 'close' relationship with, did most of the talking. He said, "Steve it is time for you to go home. Over the past few months, I have seen you change, and not for the better. You may not see it, but others can. You only had a 30 day break between tours. You are mentally exhausted. You need to go home". Then one by one, they all said their piece. It was sincere and never critical. I did not take offense to it.
I still had one year left on my enlistment, so I requested Whidbey Island, a couple hours from home (includes ferry transit). With my luck, I was assigned to an attack squadron, that would head back to the gulf of Tonkin within three months. My last eight months were spent working 12 hours on, 12 hours off, seven days a week.
I was a mess when I was discharged. It took me a few years before I was able to exorcize the demons. It was a lonely struggle. Afterwards, I volunteered to perform outreach for brothers, living on the streets of Seattle. I found them, talked to them, cried with them, then talked them into going to the VA (not 100% success). It was as therapeutic for me as them. It was also very rewarding.
Today, I work one day a week, doing the same for the middle-east veterans. I wish I could do more.
You silly fools who replied to me. I did serve in the military and I am fully aware of the low level of intelligence and ability of those who believe what they are told . I learned very quickly that wars were carried out only for conquest and for surpressing other populations. You clowns are what Williams Carlos Williams wrote about in Imperialism as a way of life. You do not have any basis for assessing the world except your own petty minds. You need to stop the nonsense of believing the military is anything but puppets of an imperial America. Anyone who is in the military now is a psychopath or a loser, and those of you who are in favor of the war should join today. What is keeping you? You are fools and cowards who want to sit home and let the psychopaths kill Iraquis that you seem to care nothing about because you support those who are in Iraq killing women and children. The only people we need to honor are those innocents Iraqis who are killed. I leave you with two unanswerabel points that you would consider if you were intelligent enough to do so.
1. Where are the Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Gates, Cristol, O'riley, 'Gingrich children? In nightclubs or like the Bush mindless daughter, out selling books.
2. A number of people complain about the lack of equiptment, medical care and other failings of the government but soldiers know these failings before they signed on, and should stop complaining. Iraqis only get killed by psyhchopatic Americans and do not have medical care or pensions of 500,000 for each dead person. We must condemn Americans and praise the Iraqis who are suffering because of the imperialist need to kill people.
THERE IS NO HONOR FOR THOSE WHO CARRY OUT THESE BARBAROUS ACTS OF AMERICAN MILITARY AND THE PUPPETS HERE WHO WANT TO HONOR THESE ACTS.
I'm a vet with PTSD who served during the cold war and am one of the thousands of women vets who dealt with sexual assault while in the military. I felt I had no real choice when I joined -- I grew up poor in a family where pretty much all the men on both sides of the family except my maternal grandfather had served, and my grades weren't good enough to get me into college. Service was the only way out of a dead end small town in the Berkshires.
War isn't just about guns and shooting. It isn't just about killing and being killed. It's about the damage that the whole way of our military does to human beings who join up or are drafted and get ground into burger by the wheels of the great machine. Today's military aren't warriors in any traditional sense, they're hired killers. It's a horrible thing to believe you're enlisting for noble reasons, or even just to get out of poverty, and find that everything you've been told and indoctrinated with is a lie and that your life is literally worth nothing to the government and the people you're trying to serve.
My family bears the scars of generations of military service. My brother still serves as Air Force active reserves and every day I thank whatever powers are protecting him that he is not serving in a war zone. He's one of the lucky ones and if we're lucky he won't have his posting changed and he'll live long enough to retire.
In dealing with my own PTSD issues I've worked a lot with models from older societies where warriors were an honored and necessary part of keeping the people alive and safe. It's proven a lot more useful to me than anything in mainstream society and I'm at least stable enough to have a decent life, even if I can't work anymore like a "normal" person. I think that a recognition of warrior spirituality is necessary if our people are going to heal from any of this, to move beyond wars of aggression and into peaceful co-existence, even with our neighbors down the street. Edward Tick is quite correct that we need a deep purification both as individuals and as a society when people come home from war, when they return from being sexually assaulted, when they're reviled and mistreated in any way.
Sanity is a terrible thing to waste.
Interesting comments. Special thanks to GW NORTH.
I'm glad the article--extremely insightful and deeply written--relates to the SEVERAL archetypes, with WARRIOR being one of them. In America it's practically the only one that's used as a viable identity-marker for men. Sports are all about winning, even religions cast their stories in terms of who wins what battles. Too much of our society is framed around the imagery of war and the illusion of winning. The WAR on drugs, the WAR on poverty, the WAR on illiteracy, the WAR on terrorism, etc.
Dennis Kucinich had it right as per creating a department of PEACE. Just the concept of suggesting OTHER, an alternative to war is a healing thing to do. Pundits and "experts" examine historical evidence and conclude that war is inevitable. Possibly, but hardly to the degree it's now practiced in large part because societies fed a diet of WAR/AGGRESSION as patriotic rhetoric, religious bull shit, Hollywood subliminals, video games, at sporting events (masked as recreation) TOLERATE an obscene military budget, and ALLOW the shipment of a digusting array of weapons (the likes of which take very SICK minds to invent, design and produce) to far too many nations thus ensuring a continuation of war.
This creation of bogey men well armed is a very powerful justification to continue to beef up the "Homeland security state." The logic behind it is self-defeating, and contaminates the whole of this heavenly planet. The detritus of land mines, unexploded cluster bombs, DU, sunken radioactive canisters, etc ad nauseum demonstrate that all the things feared come upon us. One cannot build safety or security on the basis of arms. He who lives by the sword dies (or dies a slow spiritual death) by it.
I do applaud the efforts to heal wounded warriors and fully agree that the whole of US society is bearing the brunt of this wounding at multiple levels.
This article probably says it better than anything I have ever seen before. I have a fiend who knows Ed and has travelled with him. He is authentically committed to the healing of the Soldier's Heart, through the participation of the community at large. We are not separate from each other; we are all one, sharing a common Source, regardless of what it is called or how it is honored. Until we accept our communal responsibility for the actions of our leaders and the consequences of those actions, complete healing is not possible. I trust that Ed Tick's work, and that of those he is training for this work, is leading us out of the abyss of this and any other wars.
I am committed to Oneness through Justice and Transformation
peace,
st john
I think Edward Tick got it right. I'm not religious, but we should, as they say, hate the sin and love the sinner. It is wrong to participate in wars of aggression, but heaping scorn on soldiers isn't going to help. Spit on people, and they become defensive and closed off to anything you have to say. Leaders like Bush and Cheney don't deserve any breaks, but millions of soldiers and veterans deserve respectful dialogue and a chance to reflect and reconcile. Having a punitive mindset isn't going to build a better future.
Josephmorton, I did not marry a psychopath. My nephew in the Marines is not a psychopath. It is always extremely ironic that nonthinkers like yourself feel you can afford to safely denegrate the U. S. military because of another condition you also surely complain about: the sheer ridiculous size of it. There is no chance whatsoever that you will ever have to personally defend yourself against a military-type attack here in the U. S. Our military is so absurdly large that no one in the near future is going to attack us. You are perfectly safe writing what you do, and you are safe BECAUSE of an institution you have contempt for.
I didn't vote for Bush and I hate this war. When my husband went, neither of were under any illusion that he was defending the U. S. (And if you're about to ask how he could participate, I'll explain that when you tell me what YOU'VE done in protest of the war that could land you in prison for at least a year and destroy any chance of any job for the rest of your life). When he joined up in 1981, he stated that he wanted to serve the U. S. He has done so. No one complained during or after his 3 trips to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, and if you, Joseph Morton, had been there, you'd have drank the water he brought you, or if you'd have needed flown from the N. O. airport to Houston because you were a hospital patient, you wouldn't have refused to get into the big, gray plane he flew.
For that matter, if anyone WERE foolish enough to attack us militarily, you'd sit in your house and let the psychopaths, as you put it, do the dirty work. You don't even have to consider the possibility. You are so safe.
In "Moral Minds" the researcher asserts that humans are born with a moral faculty, with a sense of right and wrong and that it part of our evolutionary makeup. He then details how various cultures then further shape that faculty to make certain actions "more" or "less" acceptable.
It appears to me that these feelings of guilt and shame as exhibited by PTSD are in part a reaction to peoples violating that fundamental source of morality. It akin to lopping off a part of ones own body. The Vietnamese veterans observation that he does not feel such because he was in essence fighting on the "right" side would seem to confirm this books conclusions.
I do not think it as much an issue of lack of treatment amongst US Veterans that leads to this rise in PTSD , it is rather that the United States has entered into far too many wars where it is on the side of wrong.
I would also suggest that it not merely the fighting of such wars that violates this "Moral Faculty" we are born with, but also of preparing for them when a nation and its Military Industrial Complex designs more efficient and ruthless methods of killing fellow human beings.
josephmorton May 24th, 2008 12:57 pm
The American soldier should not be honored in any way but condemned. They are nothing but psychpaths. There should never be one word of praise for these brutal losers. Do not buy this nonsense of defending america. Tell everyone who says they are defending 'america to come on home because you do not want such nonsense used to justify imperial wars.
You foolish person, inhumanity and a person that has never put boots-to-ground, also no kids, yeah? Ever speak with a wounded Warrior? They F$$KING CANNOT COME HOME!!! You would say "Put your guns down and leave", okay so they can be murdered on the spot, they usually do it to themselves at 18/day, that's a DoD figure ergo it is higher this probably makes you warm and fuzzy inside, yeah? Where the F$$K are they supposed to go??? You are truly an inhumane, miserable, slug that types away and never does shit to end this ILLEGAL OCCUPATION, huh? You ever get off your ass and help out???
These PATRIOTS that are ORDERED to do the unspeakable at the ages of 19-23(average)are redeployed up to 7 times with PTSD and TBI. The Murderer in Chief is quite happy with himself, as I suppose josephmorton the hater of things he knows shit about.
Thank you for your insightful article and the tribute it pays to a fallen Warrior.
You have stated a fundamental problem of the United States of America.
How can any country own the destruction it has visited on countless millions of people, starting with the native peoples of this land and moving on to destroy peoples in South America, Indonesia, the Middle East, and on and on and on. Our military budget is now 50% of our taxes, does that sound like we're getting ready to phase out of the killing game? I don't think so.
The American soldier should not be honored in any way but condemned. They are nothing but psychpaths. There should never be one word of praise for these brutal losers. Do not buy this nonsense of defending america. Tell everyone who says they are defending 'america to come on home because you do not want such nonsense used to justify imperial wars.
Prez Bush wouldn't allow coffins to be filmed coming back from Iraq. In a sense, we put ALL our soldiers in those coffins, and refuse to view them once they're home. Out of sight, out of mind.
Thank you, Edward Tick, for a profoundly moving and insightful piece. And thank you, Big Raven, for drawing the appropriate conclusions. The big shift in our thinking is long, long overdue. I wonder if it can happen.
The United States has no ritual to heal our warriors. A long drive once a year for hot dogs and beer won't do it.
Thank you for your well thought out words, I could not AGREE MORE , You see PEACE is not for the weak you have to have a stout heart and a inhierent beleif in your peoples right to live in this we find the rights of others.
This is were I find peace , the right to live in peace in the land my creator gave my people to care for and even share but some imposed whitegod and his son suposedly gave you my peoples land?????
My point is as long as you keep up this kind of pure bullshit there will be war just look at that other country that believes in your manifested destiny and how angry most become either because of how the palistinians choose to fight or the gross abuses of the state of israel.
War no more
More than 1/3 of the women enlisted in the military are sexually abused by warriors and they too are warriors.They also carry the scars, silence and degrdation of a failed protector. Unti "life" is more precious than money and the quanity of money is valued only by the human needs it assisted to earn it, we will continue to be a broken nation.
The article above is a tribute for society because it is about the healing that all of us need. Please be strong enough to learn from those we have decimated, wise enough to treasure love, innocence and the pursuit of happiness. Give a vet a nation worth coming home to.