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Welcome Home, Soldier: Now Shut Up
There are two kinds of courage in war -- physical courage and moral courage. Physical courage is very common on the battlefield. Men and women on both sides risk their lives, place their own bodies in harm's way. Moral courage, however, is quite rare. According to Chris Hedges, the brilliant New York Times war correspondent who survived wars in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and the Balkans, "I rarely saw moral courage. Moral courage is harder. It requires the bearer to walk away from the warm embrace of comradeship and denounce the myth of war as a fraud, to name it as an enterprise of death and immorality, to condemn himself, and those around him, as killers. It requires the bearer to become an outcast. There are times when taking a moral stance, perhaps the highest form of patriotism, means facing down the community, even the nation."
More and more U.S. soldiers and Marines, at great cost to their own careers and reputations, are speaking publicly about U.S. atrocities in Iraq, even about the cowardice of their own commanders, who send youth into atrocity-producing situations only to hide from the consequences of their own orders. In 2007, two brilliant war memoirs -- ROAD FROM AR RAMADI by Staff Sergeant Camilo Mejia, and THE SUTRAS OF ABU GHRAIB by Army Reservist Aidan Delgado -- appeared in print. In March 2008, at the Winter Soldier investigation just outside Washington D.C., hard-core U.S. Iraqi veterans, some shaking at the podium, some in tears, unburdened their souls. Jon Michael Turner described the horrific incident in which, on April 28, 2008, he shot an Iraqi boy in front of his father. His commanding officer congratulated him for "the kill." To a stunned audience, Turner presented a photo of the boy's skull, and said: "I am sorry for the hate and destruction I have inflicted on innocent people."
The Winter Soldier investigation was followed by the publication of COLLATERAL DAMAGE: AMERICA'S WAR AGAINST IRAQI CIVILIANS, by Chris Hedges and Laila Al-Arian. Based on hundreds of hours of taped interviews with Iraqi combat veterans, this pioneering work on the catastrophe in Iraq includes the largest number of eyewitness accounts from U.S. military personnel on record.
The Courage to Resist
We cannot understand the psychological and moral significance of military resistance unless we recognize the social forces that stifle conscience and human individuality in military life. Gwen Dyer, historian of war, writes that ordinarily, "Men will kill under compulsion. Men will do almost anything if they know it is expected of them and they are under strong social pressure to comply." "Only exceptional people resist atrocity," writes psychiatrist Robert Lifton.
How much easier it is to surrender to the will of superiors, to merge into the anonymity of the group. It takes uncommon courage to resist military powers of intimidation, peer pressure, and the atmosphere of racism and hate that drives all imperial wars.
Silencing the Witnesses to War
War crimes are collective in nature. Especially in wars based on fraud, soldiers are expected to lie -- to their country, to their community, even to themselves.
The silencing process begins on the battlefield in the presence of officers, power-holders who seek to nullify the perceptions and personal experience of troops under their command.
In his war memoir, Aidan Delgado describes attempts of his commanders to suppress the truth about Abu Ghraib. First his captain says the Army has nothing to hide, Abu Ghraib is just a rumor. But then the captain continues: "We don't need to air our dirty laundry in public. If you have photos that you're not supposed to have, get rid of them. Don't talk about this to anyone, don't write about it to anyone back home." In the U.S. military, the truth is seditious.
Two years ago, Marine Sergeant Jimmy Massey published his riveting autobiography (written with Natasha Saulnier) in France and Spain. How the Marine Corps - through indoctrination and intimidation - transforms a homeboy from the Smoky Mountains of North Carolina into a professional killer who murders "innocent people for his government" is the subject of Massey's unsettling, impassioned, Jar-head raunchy, and ultimately uplifting memoir, COWBOYS FROM HELL. (No U.S. publisher has picked up the book. A Marine who speaks truth to power is not without honor save in his own country.) In Chapter 18, Jimmy describes a seemingly minor encounter with his captain. Here Massey gives us a look into the process of human denial in its early phase.
Massey has just participated in a checkpoint massacre of civilians. His sense of decency, his sanity, is still in tact. Like any normal human being, he is distraught. The carnage of the war, the imbalance of power between the biggest war machine in history and a suffering people devoid of tanks and air power -- the sheer injustice of it all -- begins to take its toll on Massey's conscience.
In the wake of the horrific events of the day, his captain is cool. He walks up to Massey and asks; "Are you doing all right, Staff Sergeant?" Massey responds: "No, sir. I am not doing O.K. Today was a bad day. We killed a lot of innocent civilians."
Fully of aware of the civilian carnage, his captain asserts: "No, today was a good day."
Relatives wailing, cars destroyed, blood all over the ground, Marines celebrating, civilians dead, and "it was good day"!
The Massey incident goes beyond the mendacity of military life. It concerns the control, the dehumanization of the psyches of our troops.
As one Vietnam veteran put it years ago: "They kept fucking with my mind."
In 1994 Jonathan Shay, staff psychiatrist in the Department of Veterans Affairs, published a pioneering work on post traumatic stress -- Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character. According to Shay, who recorded volumes of testimony from Vietnam veterans, commanders routinely try to efface the perceptions and the normal feelings of compassion among American troops. Military necessity, including the ever-present need for political propaganda, determines what is perceived, and how it is perceived, in war.
It was an extremely common experience in Vietnam, Shay writes, to be told by military superiors dealing with crime and trauma: "You didn't experience it, it never happened, and you don't know what you know." And it was fairly common for traumatized soldiers to say to reporters: "It didn't happen. And besides, they had it coming." Shay recorded the testimony of one veteran who, in great anger, describes the pressures to alter his perceptions of collective murder.
"Daylight came, and we found out we killed a lot of fishermen and kids...You said to the team, 'Don't worry about it. Everything's fucking fine.' Because that's what we were getting from upstairs. The fucking colonel says, 'Don't worry about it. We'll take care of it. We got body count.' They'd be handing out fucking medals for killing civilians. So in your mind you're saying, 'Ah, fuck it, they're just gooks.' I was sick over it, after this happened. I actually puked my guts out...But see, it's all explained to you by captains and colonels and majors. 'Fuck it, they was suspects anyways. You guys did a great job. Erase it. It's yesterday's fucking news.'"
Willful Ignorance at Home
The collective process of denial on the battlefield eventually extends to the homeland. Returning soldiers, to be sure, are often honored, but only so long as they remain silent about the realities, the pathos, the absurd evils of war. Willful public ignorance is a source of pain for veterans.
Ernest Hemingway's brilliant short story, Soldier's Home, published in 1925 after World War I, gives us insight into the reluctance of civilians to address the psychic needs of soldiers back from war.
The simply told story is about a young man named Krebs who returns to his home in Oklahoma. At first Krebs does not want to talk about the war. But soon he feels the need to speak -- to his family, his neighbors and friends. But as Hemingway tells us, "Nobody wanted to hear about it." His town did not want to learn about atrocities, and "Krebs found that to be listened to at all he had to lie."
There's the rub. His ability to assimilate into civilian life depended on his willingness to fabricate stories about the war. Soldiers are not only expected to lie on behalf of the military during the course of war, they are also expected to participate in homecoming rituals that preserve the civilian fantasy of war's nobility.
In Hemingway's story, the pressure to lie is so powerful, Krebs begins to manufacture stories about his experiences in battle -- just to get along, just be able to lead a normal life.
Repression, however, is a major cause of mental illness and loneliness. Krebs morale deteriorates. He sleeps late in bed. He loses interest in work. He withdraws into himself.
That's all Hemingway tells us. It's a quietly told story, all the more powerful for its understatement.
There is a connection between Hemingway's war-informed fiction and real life. As Shay notes, there is a tension between a soldier's need to communalize shame and grief and the unwillingness of civilians to listen to troops whom they sent into battle. One Vietnam veteran told the following story:
"I had just come back from Vietnam and my first wife's parents gave a dinner for me and my parents and her brothers and their wives. And after dinner we were all sitting in the living room and her father said: 'So, tell us what it was like.' And I started to tell them, and I told them. And do you know that within five minutes the room was empty. They were all gone, except my wife. After that I didn't tell anybody what I had seen in Vietnam."
Welcome home, soldier. Now shut up.
Notwithstanding clichés and pieties about support for troops, those who promote war are often the least likely to share the burdens and memories of war when soldiers return. When Ron Kovic, who was paralyzed from the chest down during the war in Vietnam, steered his wheelchair down the aisle of the Republican National Convention in 1972, the delegates spat on him and cheered for Nixon -- "Four more years."
W.D. Erhart, Vietnam veteran and author of Passing Time, never forgot the horrific episodes of his tour in Vietnam. In his first autobiography, he tells a friend about his speech at a Rotary Club. "I even put on a coat and tie and went to the Rotary Club. The Rotary Club, for chrissake. I laid it all out for 'em. I told 'em about search and destroy missions, harassment and interdiction fire, winning hearts and minds, all that stuff...Was I ever sharp that day.
"Now listen. You won't believe this. I got done and nobody said a word. No applause. Nothing. Then this skinny old fart shaped like a cold chisel gets up and says he's a retired colonel, and he thinks we should keep on pounding those little yellow bastards until they do what we say or we kill 'em all, and he tells me I can't be a real veteran because a real veteran wouldn't go around badmouthing the good old U.S. of A., and the whole place erupts in thunderous applause."
Welcome home, soldier. Now shut up.
Today Georgia Stillwell is a mother of a 21-year-old Iraqi war veteran. Her son is now homeless, unemployed, and despondent. Early one morning he drove his car over an embankment. She says that her son is a mere physical shell of himself. "My son's spirit and soul must still be wandering the streets of Iraq." It is not simply what happened in Iraq, but how veterans are treated at home when they seek to unburden their souls, that reinforces post-traumatic stress. On the night he drove the car off the road, he was crying, talking about the war. "His friends tell me he talks about the war. They describe it as 'crazy talk.' He wants the blood of the Iraqis he killed off his hands."
"Each generation," writes Chris Hedges, "discovers its own disillusionment, often at a terrible price. And the war in Iraq has begun to produce legions of the lost and the damned." For our morally courageous veterans -- for all of us, really, who seek forgiveness -- only the truth can heal.
BlackCommentator.com Guest Commentator, Paul Rockwell, is a writer living in the Bay Area. He is also a columnist for In Motion Magazine. Click here to reach Mr. Rockwell.
Copyright ©2002-2008 www.BlackCommentator.com
39 Comments so far
Show AllHere in Canada, we only celebrate the ones that come home in a box. Even then, our VA "forgets" to reimburse the spouses for funeral expenses on occasion.
when they come back all messed up, they get discharged and left to fend for themselves. The Vets have even setup their own food banks. its bloody shameful.
Excellent analysis. Many examples of full circle vets. Through WW2 vets came home proud, and could boast of their service. The Korean vet came home quiet. What was there to boast about? The Vietnam vet came home confused and angry. Many felt betrayed. Our latest vets are coming home confused, angry and sick. And the worst thing that they can do is to shut up. In order for them to go full circle and recover they are going to have to reconcile, first with themselves and then with their former 'enemy'.
Talking openly about their experiences greatly influences the chances to stop the next war from starting. It also helps the individual to process his experience into a positive, rather than a negative one. Current vets are lucky to have role models like Cpl. Mejia and Lt. Watada and all the other full circle vets to help them find the strength to believe their conscience.
Hoa binh
War is a package deal where grisly death, torture, rape, abuse and other atrocities are part of the package. War damages the soul of both the victor and the defeated.
http://theformofmoney.blogharbor.com/blog/_archives/2006/10/9/2402709.html
I'm am beginning to wonder what is going on in Canada. With 2500 troops in Afghanistan, and 75 odd deaths thus far, why isn't the Canadian gov't putting aside some resources for its returning veterans?
2500 troops, times 6 years of operations (2002 - 2008) would equate to about 5000 troops that have done a tour and are either redeployed to Canada or out of the military. 5000 guys walking around trying to pick of the pieces and get on with life. Alone.
In America, a combat veteran can walk into any VA hospital or regional office and have some hope of getting treatment or compensation. The system is far from perfect and learning Chapter 38, Code of Federal Regulations is no walk in the park. What can Canadian soldiers do?
Where is the Royal Canadian Legion? Where would a Canadian veteran even begin? I assume the military puts little to nothing into the problem, but what about the socialized medical system? I think this falls under the Pension Act...or something.
My wife will be using my veterans educational benefits to attend a college in Alberta within the next few months, I think that while we are up there, I I will begin looking into this issue. I have helped a handful of American veterans navigate the VA system, I think I will take a shot at helping our neighbors to the north.
My oldest brother was a WWII vet. He had been a sniper. When he returned home, he had a hard time keeping a job, but after a few years settled into marriage and family and became financially successful. He would never talk about the war until near his death when he had suffered a series of small strokes. He talked about the smell. And then he cried.
The WW II vets in my family did not talk about their experiences, except one who was a pilot and removed from the consequences on the ground. One Vet repeatedly said that anyone who talks positively about their war experience is probably lying. But at least they had a cogent moral rationale for why they were there.
The Korean vet didn't talk, except about the frostbite.
The Vietnam vet talked about throwing people out of a helicopter and then had a nervous breakdown and went AWOL.
Soldiers are also victims of war.
The soldiers who speak out are doing us a great service, much more so than obediently carrying a gun. The Solomon Asch conformity experiments illustrate the power of conformity but also the power of voicing dissent. A brief description can be found here...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asch_conformity_experiments
"When the confederates are not unanimous in their judgment, even if only 1 confederate voices a different opinion, participants are much more likely to resist the urge to conform than when the confederates all agree. This finding illuminates the power that even a small dissenting minority can have."
Veterans and active duty soldiers, telling stories that contribute to healing not only for themselves and other veterans, but to healing also for our nation and all people who have been harmed by these wars.
http://ivaw.org/wintersoldier/testimony/
Chris Hedges says "Each generation discovers its own disillusionment, often at a terrible price". Very true, but why is this a recurring phenomenon?
I reasonably (but it turned out naively) believed that when the Vietnam War peace movement eventually forced a withdrawal of US forces from southeast Asia over the fierce and formidable political opposition of the Nixon White House and pro-war Democrats, there had certainly been some bitter lessons learned. For awhile, that appeared to be true. Jimmy Carter did what needed to be done in terms of amnesty, and then nothing else was said. Reagan was free to rattle all the sabres he wanted, secure in the knowledge that majorities in both the House and Senate would never go along for the ride.
But the tenacity of the angry, pro-Vietnam war supporters was underestimated. Bit by bit, incrementally, the military industrial complex regained popular momentum: Libya, Beruit, Grenada, Panama, the Persian Gulf Desert Storm campaign, Bosnia, and now Afghanistan and occupied Iraq. An excellent discourse on the gradual rehabilitation of the warrior ethic in American pop culture after the fall of Saigon is contained in Andrew Bacevich's book, The New American Militarism.
To me (as a veteran who fortunately did not experience actual combat) the fundamental problem is that the silence of the returning soldiers tends to be starkly asymetrical.
Those with the moral courage Hedges speaks about far too often do shut up, or find themselves marginalized or villified when they do speak out.
In contrast, those who extoll the virtues of patriotic wartime sacrifice have a whole support network of politically connected veterans' groups, and regular national holiday forums like Memorial Day, Flag Day, and the Fourth of July to communally celebrate the passing of the Pentagons' torch to the next generation.
It's no coincidence that elected office holders and political candidates are everywhere at veterans' group sponsored events, but are often hard to find at peace vigils or antiwar rallies. Silence about the realities of real war is very one sided.
What might be a good first step to address breaking this cycle would be to set aside one day a year as an official federal peace and social justice holiday - maybe around the anniversary date of Dr. King's address at the Riverside Church.
Bill from Saginaw
My father served in WWII, in the Pacific theater. He was stationed on the island of Saipan. He never volunteered any stories, so one day I asked him about it. He recounted an incident where he & his troop were advancing in the jungle, & he came face to face with a Japanese soldier who spoke only broken English. He looks at my old man & says; "Me no hate you, you no hate me. Me under orders, you under orders". At this point, dad had stopped talking, & was just staring off in the distance. Even in my young mind, I realized he was reliving something horrible. Even so, it was like waiting for the other shoe to drop, so I gently asked him "What happened then?" Still looking off in the distance, he said "I I I I shot him". The temperature of the room dropped 10 degrees. I realized both of these soldiers had been put in an unwinnable situation by those in power in their respective contries. There really was no chance for either of them to just walk away. My dad continued sitting there, staring ahead, reliving the nightmare. I didn't know what else to do & walked quietly away. I never EVER asked for another story.
There were other signs of the wars' influence, too many to list here, but I will mention one. Occasionally, he "felt like there were ants" crawling all over his legs & feet that had him fidgeting for hours, rubbing them over & over.
War IS hell, but sadly, a man made one. When will we stop the insanity?
^^Yep. Once soldiers are in the field, the battle for moral actions is lost. They will do what they have to do to survive, understandably. And after a while, they'll start to do it as a reflex even when it's not necessary.
Somehow we have to get a majority of the public to understand the simple truth that it's immoral to go to a war in the first place. Once there, you will commit murders.
Braveheart57 June 27th, 2008 6:00 pm
God bless your Dad. My Dad was on Saipan too, he never told me anything about it. He told me three things . One about Guadalcanal, two about Iwo Jima. I was im my twenties before he spoke. The only one I'd repeat was that the Marines had c rations for weeks and when the army came ashore and set up mobile kitchens, they wouldn't serve the Masrines, when the SeaBee's set theirs up, a Marine never went without a hot meal again. A SeaBee never bought a drink or a meal in his presence again. I saw him pay for one in 1987.
"The WW II vets in my family did not talk about their experiences, except one who was a pilot and removed from the consequences on the ground. One Vet repeatedly said that anyone who talks positively about their war experience is probably lying."
That's the truth.
"He talked about the smell. And then he cried."
God bless him with peace.
There's some BS floating around here with the truth.
World War II was the last war this country fought for principal and the greater good. Every action, skirmish, battle and confronation since WWII has been at the behest of the Military Industrial Complex, with profit and power as its motivation. It is no wonder that Veterans come home damaged in spirit. They're not stupid and are completely capable of logical, reasoned thought. And it doesn't take much logical, reasoned thought to realize that war--irregardless of the patriotic spin machine--is no longer an honorable cause. It is now a business. Soldiers are raw materials and cost centers. Damaged soldiers are negative assets on the balance sheet. Dead soldiers are acceptable collateral damage.
I remain eternally thankful that I had a high draft number. Many of my friends that didn't are still fighting in Vietnam. They will be for the rest of their lives.
Is the writer the Paul Rockwell who used to write brilliant radical pamphlets on the Columbia University campus in the late 60's?
Moral courage is even lacking in congress where members say they are against this war but continue to vote for more funding. Group think or group pressure as stated in the field of psychology is the hardest dynamic to overcome because one wants the approval of the group even when the group is wrong. So the individual is willing to suspend his or her beliefs even if to do so means the death of another person or persons. Another hinderance to moral courage is the lack of education on not only what it is but how one display's moral courage. Right wing conservatives who are against thought would label a professor teaching a course on morality left-wing. We must educate ourselves on our right to morally object. Our leaders/educaters wont tell us what's morally right or morally wrong, because then we might act on the outcomes of our moral thinking.
No wars are ever fought for principle and greater good. The U.S. government had no principled problem with fascism, they just didn't like the fact that Hitler and Mussolini and the Japanese government mobilized efficient fascism against the United States. Ultimately that war was about international finance and economics. Read "Trading With the Enemy: The Nazi-American Money Plot" by Charles Higham.
Grunt: All canadians are insured and can go to a doctor, or a hospital, as long as they can find one. So a canadian vet already has that. Whatever malady he has is covered. Plus there are specialized centers for military people. If you are not sick, then that's another story.
Bill from Saginaw,
The UN has already declared a day of Peace; September 21. It is intended to be a world wide cease fire any where there are hostilities.
There is a documentary, "Peace One Day," telling about the years of lobbying for it, by a young British film maker.
Tragically the ceremony to announce it, took place at the UN in NY City ON 9/11 2001. They were forced to evacuate the UN.
Other countries celebrate it but it never caught on much here, except for some civic minded schools!
Spread the word and plan some celebration for that day. September 21 2008!
opeluboy June 27th, 2008 9:07 pm
I'm extremely glad you had a high number too.
My number was 187--they only drafted up to 100 that year.
A study in moral courage:
Russia. June 1942. A 26 year old lieutenant in the German Army, Michael Kitzelmann, was sentenced to death by shooting for questioning the official policy of starving the Russian people to death. Kitzelmann, a holder of the Iron Cross who had fought in Poland and France, and who before the war was in training for the Roman Catholic priesthood, stated in front of his men that: "...If these criminals should win, I would not wish to live any longer".
Before the sentence was carried out, he forgave the sergeant who'd denounced him. In his last days in the prison cell in Orel, Michael found peace.
If I were in a similar situation, I pray that I'd have the courage to be like him. If there are any Michael Kitzelmanns now, will they please stand up, for all our sakes?
Another one who is a real hero is Charles Voegele, the quartermaster of the U-boat that sank the Lusitania in 1915, saying he would not take part in an attack on women and children, and refused to pass on the order to the torpedo room. For his action he was court-martialed and served three years in prison.
I wonder why they don't teach it (moral courage) in schools. Actually I don't wonder at all -- we must do as we are told.
Considering Dubya, Cheney, & Co.'s "Great Lurch Backwards" to the bad old days has a rather extensive reach, it is not surprising that treating soldiers as dirt a la the Bonus March of 1932 is part of the program.
Stand up for your country but don't expect your country to stand up for you.
Sadly,
We are all lesser people for needing to have this honest discussion. War is no more a part of human nature than rape or slavery. We recognize those acts for what they are. War is the same. The rulers of the world are very rich people. Rich people don't fight. They read about war. Global warming, peak oil, a crumbling economy, forget about them. We're still killing each other. Some say it's about depopulating the world. A grand plan to solve these environmental problems. I see it as an adolescent, pathetic way of resolving our differences. Words need have no meaning when we agitate to pull the trigger.
Remember yelling shotgun to your siblings, to see who got to ride up front? We should do the same for war. Yell it first, and you get to go first.
Would the author please change the name of the respected war historian from "Gwen Dyer" to "Gwynne Dyer," which is correct.
Good article.
I read this, and it's sad but not a surprise at all. It makes me think of all the arguments I had, sometimes terrible arguments, about Iraq, and the torture, and staying in Iraq, and even what if it became a civil war. So many people I told would regret this, people who said they cared about the military. I told them it would be a bitter pill, but I'm the one left feeling bitter. As former military, it feels more personal. I knew a lot of great people in the military, people that were fair and decent to me. People I would never wish in harms way, not for some fools errand, and I think many of their hearts must be broken by now.
About the only thing we ever agreed about, those I used to care to argue with, was that we would NOT stay in Iraq (or poor forgotten Afghanistan) if it became a civil war. Because we could never WIN a civil war. Troops fighting a war they can never win. I swear it was the only point that gave me hope, because no one argued about it, that we would NOT fight a civil war.
But they didn't mean it, did they? I think so little of my fellow Americans now, while they hide their heads in the sand. I'm not sure what's left to believe in, except the people writing articles like this one. I didn't think our nation would turn it's back on the soldiers like this, again, but now there are many stories, and they're being ignored again. So I guess I was the biggest fool of all, thinking anyone actually meant what they said. Fair weather friends and fools.
My Dad was on Saipan, also.
He told me this story to debunk the atheists in foxholes story. At the time of the war he was religious.
He was in a foxhole and a Japanese warplane was coming at him. He didn't pray. All he thought was, "I'm going to die now".
But the pilot looked at him. He saw his eyes. And the pilot flew on without killing him.
I wonder if that pilot knew the soldier that Braveheart's Dad killed?
I know that my Dad was on Saipan or Guam when the US dropped the atomic bombs on Japan. The first one he was glad about, because at that time he thought it would stop the war. But, when they dropped the second one, he thought it was wrong. This is a man on an island in WW2, who had the human decency to question mass murder, even though he was told that it was to benefit him.
It is not from cowardice that I say: There is no case for war. Ever. Better to die than be a killer
War is anti-soul.
If we lived by the Soul and not the sword the world would be a paradise regained.
I really wish a US publisher would pick up Jimmy Massey's book!! I was fortunate to read a few early chapters. It needs to be read.
It totally blew me away when I learned it's been published in FRANCE, but no US publisher would touch it!
Too bad a brave soul like Massey is stuck dealing with such cowards.
"Yell it first, and you get to go first."
Works for me!
greenerthanthou June 28th, 2008 3:00 pm
My Dad was on Saipan, also.
May God bless him and keep him. There were too many Marines and soldiers on too many islands then. There are darn sure too many still there.
The biggest victim in the Iraq debacle is G.W. Bush.
Treating PTSD
STOP the WAR and CURE PTSD! EX is GARBAGE!
Americo does everything backwards!
We spend Trillions buying placebos instead of
Curing the Disease.
Why is, the cheap and simple answer always left out?
What, Big PHARMA, Doctors, Lawyers and The War Machine would loose?
GOOD!
They are all Blood sucking Vampires.
PARASITES!
Ex is Garbage with a big down side.
There are plenty of less harmful, milder, Natural Psychedelics!
Use them only as a last resort.
First try this:
PRSD is also triggered by loud noises.
The sensitivity to them can be treated by doing regular things in a safe environment with loud noises happening normally for a day and one half.
RECONDITIONING
All should be supervised and done in the proper setting.
These minds are fragile and can be healed in a safe environment, very carefully.
Sure a glimpse behind the curtain (Reality) would do them some good.
But, why now?
And at what cost?
How, when and where it is done is important also.
It can be a Pharma Nightmare or the real thing.
Enough with the crap already!
Give them the good Shit, for once in their lives.
Yea, it would mean giving them Jobs, Respect, Homes, Health care and an Education.
Everything they went off to fight for.
Treat them like they are worth something.
But, what would anybody know about that?
They have always been treated like Garbage.
Expendable.
When we become more Human and less Robotic this will stop happening.
Why should we be Victimized, Tortured, Spied on, Shattered, Broken, then Discarded and TERRORIZED by The Shrub and Dead Eye DICK?
What A-s Holes!
Is there anybody lower?
Is this what we where created for?
Is this, all that we have to look forward to?
Endless, meaningless, Death and Destruction?
It makes me crazy to!
To think, that they get away with it!
This Hoax!
Apparition!
SHAM!
BU__! SH__!
All the Drugs in the world, can never save us from these Monsters or cure the broken system that created them.
Only changing it will.
Can we become more Humane?
Can we be Better Human Beings?
Can we become what we truly are,
Neighborly, Helpful, Brotherly Loving, Cooperative, Compassionate, Peaceful, Human Beings?
Will they ever leave us alone?
Only if we stop them and
Be what we truly are, instead of what they are trying to make us.
Like them!
SLAVES
This is an absolutely brilliant piece.
And miftin, thank you very much for the reading suggestion! It has been added to my reading list.
I wonder what could be done to make the enemy pay for the repairs?Probably the spoils go to the victor.
I totally agree with comments by Raster on June 27th, 2008 8:37 pm.
"World War II was the last war this country fought for principal and the greater good. Every action, skirmish, battle and confrontation since WWII has been at the behest of the Military Industrial Complex, with profit and power as its motivation. It is no wonder that Veterans come home damaged in spirit. They're not stupid and are completely capable of logical, reasoned thought. And it doesn't take much logical, reasoned thought to realize that war–irregardless of the patriotic spin machine–is no longer an honorable cause. It is now a business. Soldiers are raw materials and cost centers. Damaged soldiers are negative assets on the balance sheet. Dead soldiers are acceptable collateral damage."
All we teach in American schools in history classes is fake, mostly manufactured books, add media spins and advertises to them. And that sums in what you see today.
Can we claim us as "human" any more. What percentage part are we human nowadays? We have degrade our life below animals.
You need to understand -- this IS the "Brave New World".
Our job is to be of service, either to government or corporations. Those who fail to perform satisfactorily
are dispensable. If they can't work, they are of no use to us. These are the values we have collectively embraced.
WW2 was not the last good war. It wasn't good at all. Some things were a lot worse than others, and some even had a net positive effect compared to not doing them, but 40-100M dead does not make a good war, no matter how many tyrants were deposed.
In order to get the US into WW2, FDR deliberately instigated and aided the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. That resulted in millions dead in SE Asia, Pacific Islands, and Japan. (I note the war was underway for many years in Korea and China.) It also resulted in an end run around basic principles of democratic government in the US, and established a precedent for 9/11/2001 (as opposed to 9/11/1973). It led to the US policy of targeting tens and hundreds of thousands of civilians as a tactic of war, and ultimately, threatening to annihilate all human life as a tactic. Many millions have died since as the US military told itself they were so moral compared to how bad they had been before, or in still threatening to kill everyone for decades.
WW2 was not a good war. Neither was the aftermath.