Recently, the media had been
ablaze with the reports of an American soldier who, after walking into an
The uni-polar decision to condemn this man for his actions, albeit somewhat justified, should be recognized as more than just a crazy man gone vigilantly; it should more appropriately be looked at as the result of a system that has taken our soldiers from people to property in the grand game of economic war paid for with the blood of those who are forced into endless tours of duty and the policies of death employed by the military industrial complex. When a drone kills innocent civilians, it is called an accident even when it was known the targets were civilians. When a lone soldier does so, it is defined as an act of murder by a mentally troubled person rather than by the machine he was trained to be.
The
soldier's history shows that this was his fourth tour in the
Many speaking on the subject have said that the defense's claim of PTSD is fabricated; that the soldier was drinking alcohol with others the night of the attack and when combined with his domestic issues, he "just snapped", completely discounting any accountability our Nation has for the real issue at hand: Our soldiers have been over deployed, away from their families, subjected to psychological trauma day after day and in some cases, even after injuries are suffered, forced back to the front lines to continue their journey through a pointless war.
How many Americans are sitting in judgment of this one soldier when just months back, we heard these same hypocrites supporting politicians advocating that we should "bomb the hell out of Iran"? Is it acceptable for military leaders to advocate the killing of innocents but then to judge the soldiers in the ranks who carry out this sickening policy? If anyone should be arrested as a murderer, it should be those who have ordered the extinguishing of the lives of millions of civilians in the false names of freedom and Democracy, not the men and women who either follow orders or fall victim to the mental wounds of war.
But civilians are often considered collateral damage to the American Military Complex. In this recent slaughter though, it has somehow become a high crime only to offer the soldier as a sacrificial lamb and distract us from how many other crimes are committed by special ops, black ops, drone attacks and CIA commanded death squads. To many soldiers, the "innocents" are enemy potentials and in the grand scheme of things, collateral damage victims waiting to be. Many though, suffer for this taught mentality as their human side combats their military weapon side which is trained to kill. When this conflict occurs, soldiers are often unable to cope.
As pointed out by Vanessa
Williamson and Erin Mulhal in their book, Invisible Wounds,
"Untreated psychological injuries have"pushed both troops and veterans to
take their own lives. " The suicide rate for soldiers on active-duty has
risen, feeding concerns about whether troops showing signs of mental health
injuries after their first deployment are being sent back to
On the affects of killing on our soldiers and the PTSD that is associated with it, Charles Duhigg in his article, Soldiers trained to kill, not to cope, records several interviews he has had on this topic with military insiders;
"It's complete
negligence," says Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, a retired psychology instructor
at
"The military could train soldiers to talk about killing as easily as they train them to pull the trigger. But commanders are in denial. Nobody wants to accept the blame for a soldier who comes home a wreck for doing what his country asked him to do," he says.
The emotional and psychological ramifications of killing are mostly unstudied by the military, defense officials acknowledge.
"The idea and experience of killing another person is not addressed in military training," says Col. Thomas Burke, director of mental-health policy for the Defense Department. "Training's intent is to re-create battle, to make it an automatic behavior among soldiers."
The more soldiers ignore
their emotions and behave like trained machines rather than thinking people,
the more you invite PTSD," says Dr. David Spiegel of the
Far too many enlisted have been forced to return to war, where they should not have been. Even when those soldiers who have endured far too many tours, witnessing the brutal reality of war commit suicide, the powers that be try to paint them as mentally unstable instead of those suicides being an indictment of an errant policy. When those soldiers who have had enough and see now way out other than to commit suicide, they have in the past, been dismissed as mentally unstable and their families denied condolences for the loss of their hero. Our current President has changed this policy, though showing that maybe some real changes are coming.
As Democracy
Now reported, "The Obama administration has reversed a
longstanding
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