This is an excellent video about the other side of the U.S. military and the Iraq war.
It focuses on the damage war does on a personal / psychological level and makes you think of the countless thousands of psychologically damage ex-soldiers that will be dumped back into American society.
After seeing the horrors of war, after being alert to attack almost 24/7, after committing and/or witnessing horrific crimes, these people will never be the same again. Some talk of their world view collapsing; others about not being able to fit back into their lives because they’re simply not the same person.
Some ex-soldiers will gradually adapt, some will not; some will abuse their spouses or children; some will kill others or themselves and some, like Timothy McVeigh, will be so damaged they’ll turn their brutal training on the society that encouraged them in the first place.
Bush says “we will fight them there so we won’t have to fight them here”. I find this total nonsense. First who is the “Enemy” ? It is actually an ideology, a perverted religion that thinks that the US represents Satan and must be punished. Now those who believe this crap could be anyone (mostly Islam - Arabs but not necessarily) from anywhere between Marocco to Pakistan, India, Bangladesh. So there is no geographical area or country that represents this ideology. The bombings in London were made by people who lived in the suburbs of London, so are you going to fight a war in London ?
An army against a “philosophy” is pure nonsense. The ideas travel across the world, you could have some oddball Fundamentalist right in Texas who thinks that he should blow himself up and kill others because women don’t wear Burqas and the US is the great Satan. How can a war in Iraq avoid this ?
This is mostly a war of ideas, of concepts. An army fighting an imaginary war in Iraq is just a sitting duck.
Indeed, the cycle of damage wrought by war will damagingly continue long after the warriors return from the war zone.
The war zone will linger inside of them, and they will project it onto their immediate surroundings, creating a war zone where ever they go.
Those who authorize wars really need to be sure of why and also consider these ramifications too.
Was preventing the loss of Iraq’s crude oil really worth it all the murdered and irrevocably damaged lives that will permeate our society destructively for scores of years … or much longer?
Then again, many politicos find paranoid people the easiest to manipulate.
Such purposeful cynical behavior should be illegal, an impeachable offense.
Yeah, I just finished listening to a course on tape about the modern era. One of the major points about the rise of european fascism was that it was due, in part, to many people’s inability to psychologically demobilize.
But we don’t have anywhere near enough soldiers to have that kind of phenomenon occur in the US right now. So, all we’ll be left with will be a bunch of broken people for no real reason.
The movie Harsh Times adresses just this question in a brutally honest manner. If you want to see what this war does to young people and their friends, this movie is a good start.