What is Digg?92 Comments
- mrMunchies, on 11/05/2009, -1/+30For soldiers the war does not end when they come home. These people have to live with terrible memories that the majority of us can not understand.
- BotchaMcCoola, on 11/05/2009, -5/+29Maybe they would have more peace of mind if they stopped wasting US prosperity on this ridiculous *****. You do not start wars over terrorist crimes.
- allnuts, on 11/05/2009, -2/+26This article fails to mention too, how many men come back from combat and kill family members too. This is so tragic, and our government does what they always do, absolutely nothing, too little too late to do any good. It's the way it's always been. Spend hundreds of billions of dollars to make war, then @!$%# about spending a few hundred million to take care of those who were wounded and maimed. I don't take "No" for an answer. I am trying to shame my congressman into getting more money for those people. What are you doing?
- midnightliberty, on 11/06/2009, -1/+20I blamed Bush too. Now they are Obama's wars and Democrats and Republicans support them, so I blame both parties and Obama.
- midnightliberty, on 11/06/2009, -1/+17He is increasing the defense budget. He is ratcheting up the war in Afghanistan. He is belligerent towards Iran. He is in favor of the Patriot Act and FISA. He is predator bombing and destabilizing Pakistan. He is pretending to withdraw from Iraq while actually turning over operations to private contractors. Also, last I checked a 35,000 to 50,000 troop strong "residual force" will remain in Iraq even after the "withdrawal" is supposedly complete. He might or might not be closing Gitmo but you can be damn sure he is not discontinuing indefinite detention without trial. You can also be sure secret prisons worse than Gitmo are still in operation around the world.
In other words, he has kept the status quo but made several highly publicized symbolic moves to keep people like you appeased. - wannaBdug, on 11/05/2009, -1/+16I can't imagine what it must be like to live with the horrors of war. My brother will never be the same.
- pimpofpixels, on 11/07/2009, -1/+11Volunteer military. No excuses.
- ChuckDees, on 11/07/2009, -2/+11Yep he promised a time table for withdrawal from Iraq and set it back in February.
- tgc1, on 11/07/2009, -0/+8I really don't want to say this. But this is the result of glorifying War. War, as was once said, is the most brutal of all hells. It is inhuman. It ruins you as a human being. Even the wars hardest fought men have their quiet moments where their battles come back to live with them in their heads once more.
If you look at the American picture of war it's GIJoe. It's Call of Duty. It's Modern Warfare. It's Halo. It's Hero's kicking the bad guys ass. Whoever that is. It's "America, ***** Yeah" -- It's all that nonsense that people push behind it. Inbuing War with that which it does not have. There is no REAL glory in war. There is no REAL winner. There are only the living and the dead. Putting all this emphasis on being the good guys and they the bad, whomever they are this day. To say that our way is the only way. That only we know the way. That inspires people. It inspires them in the wrong way. It tells people to go to that recruiting office. Sign up. You'll be a Hero. And people who do that, they DO become heroes. That's the mentality we have adopted. That the second you put on that uniform, you're another person. You're one of the good guys.
But what happens to the bad guys? Who are they? Don't they have families? Don't their kids cry when their parents go off to fight? What happens when a 1000 pound bomb kills several members of someones family? When Dad or Mom doesn't come home that night? That's when the cold, harsh reality of War sinks in. The realization to the F16 pilot. To that A10 pilot. To those infantry men. To those Abrahms tank platoons. When it dawns on them in the silence of the night. We're all the same. No matter the skin color, religion, creed, we're all human. We all have families. And War effects us all equally. I think that's what gets people in the end. The stress. The fighting... the constant struggle to keep your humanity.
I think PTST is very real. It effects people who come back. Who have seen the cold harsh reality of War. Of the aftermath of that cool looking explosion. Of the body parts strewn all over the place. And it's not always the "Bad Guy" either. Sometimes it's women, and children who get caught up in the cross fire. At the end of the day when people are killed other lives are ruined. The spreading of the human effect on families and friends doesn't just happen on the "good guys" side. And I think ultimately, some people end up realizing that.
I wish we could all get along. I wish that we didn't have a military industrial complex pushing an agenda to make trillions of dollars on the backs of fake wars. Wars under false pretense. Under lies. Sending people out there at the stroke of a pen. Ruining families on both sides. And at the top, people reaping the rewards without a care in the world. At the end of the day we are ALL equal. We all struggle. We all fight. And we all have families. You ever see one of those videos they post up about someone in the military surprising their kid at school? See the look on that kids face when they realize their father is there? They break down. They cry. There is a shock. A relief. That kid gets to see their parent. Gets to see "Daddy." Just keep in mind that those "Bad Guys" -- They have kids too. They have families. Uncles. Aunts. Fathers and mothers. And when they get blown away in some struggle, however sold to them. Be it for the virgins, or for freedom. Or for religion. When that parent doesn't come home that day... you think about the way that must effect those kids. The kids who have nothing to do with it. Who just want to see "Daddy" or mommy. That's the kind of thing that ruins people on both sides of the struggle. Mentally destroys you.
So when you guys go and play your Halo. Play Call of Duty. Or whatever the latest war sim is these days. Keep that in mind. Glorifying this Hero stuff just keeps this whole thing going. There's going to be another war out there some day. Maybe one day it'll involve you. Or your kid. Think about that. Maybe when we can stop and THINK about the human toll and how we are all one. Maybe then we'll be able to reach our enlightenment. - rmxz, on 11/07/2009, -1/+9@Krakerjax: "Thats a pretty big insult to soldiers who don't want to be fighting over there in the first place."
Then shouldn't they be protesting the not-quite-a-war-since-war-was-never-declared /occupation instead of "just following orders"?
(and even if it was a war, didn't it end at "Mission accomplished") - pimpofpixels, on 11/07/2009, -1/+8Conscience is a bitch.
- janjamm, on 11/05/2009, -1/+8There are so many variables to try to parse out of these suicides. In these "useless" wars, our soldiers need an entirely different orientation than the one they receive in boot camp. They need an entirely different education about the world than they receive in school. Americans are unprepared for the new realities of the world.
- fadeout, on 11/07/2009, -0/+7"In vietnam you served for 1 entire year. You knew the exact day you would be going home AND you wernt required to ever go back unless you volunteer, our soldiers nowadays dont have that comfort."
While stop loss is reprehensible in my opinion, you're blatantly misrepresenting the facts or you didn't know them in the first place.
ALL soldiers going to Iraq or Afghanistan volunteered. Not so with Vietnam, where they were drafted against their will. - kaelyiesta, on 11/07/2009, -0/+7Krakerjax, reason is the only valid sovereign a person has. Any thing else is a crutch for the weak and a whip for the ones in command. Honor is meaningless without reason. If you make an oath to go to obey and fight for a nation and it turns out that said nation starts wars of aggression, using the excuse of honor is about as disgusting and disgraceful a claim as one can make.
Being killed for desertion and other such things are valid reasons. Being bound by some mindless code is not. - DeusNova, on 11/07/2009, -0/+6The military is really short on psychologists and psychiatrists from what I understand...what needs to happen is there needs to be some type of incentive of mental health professionals to join the army.
There's a drug that exists that can help with PTSD tremendously , it's called MDMA...http://www.maps.org/mdma/ Unfortunately, it's a schedule I substance(it's essentially pure ecstasy) which means it has no medical use. It puts you into a state of empathy which means you can easily share your feelings and emotions, psychotherapy on MDMA is known for years of therapy. These suicides might not have happened if MDMA was a schedule III drug for therapeutic use. SRIs and SSRIs aren't going to do much about PTSD, however one dose of MDMA and a psychotherapy session *might* make the PTSD vanish. There's a lot of promising research about it this drug and PTSD. If we were to legalize MDMA in a therapeutic setting I think it would benefit ton of people with PTSD and mental illnesses. - andyroo316, on 11/07/2009, -0/+6@Krakerjax, as for the first and last questions:
Anyone joining the military just to pay for college or because it's a tradition doesn't have a sound, reasonable mind anyway, so if it was those guys committing suicide, I'm not surprised. There's plenty of other ways to earn money and get respect from your family and continue family traditions without joining the military on a whim and then getting suicidal when things don't pan out when a war starts.
You join the military to help the country and yourself for the two reasons you outlined in the other two questions, along with helping your colleagues.
I'm not saying I don't support those that do join it for family/money reasons, or that these guys are the sole suicide attempts in the military, but I think it'd be much better for their mental health (whether they become suicidal or not) if they had a career they were truly suited to and wanted. - JoeParanoid, on 11/07/2009, -1/+7Sad but true, when you re-examine the history.
- jeexbit, on 11/07/2009, -0/+6I heard a statistic which I believe to be true, but haven't verified -specifically, more soldiers died from suicide in the Vietnam war *after returning home from combat* than died in actual combat overseas.
Horrible. - inactive, on 11/07/2009, -3/+9um, not a single war US fought had a humanitarian purpose.
- GrammerPants, on 11/07/2009, -0/+5Cowards? Perhaps, but suicide isn't something people just decide to do, there was something wrong (majorly) and no one helped them.
- seltaeb4, on 11/07/2009, -0/+5Anyone that calls them cowards has no understanding whatsoever of chronic depression and mental illness.
- Abatrour, on 11/07/2009, -0/+5How many of them were "suicided" because they would have exposed the lies, war crimes, and corruption?
I wonder how many of them spoke out against the war and were killed for that. - AntoineDigg, on 11/06/2009, -2/+6No one says anything when these same politicians use the name of soldiers in vain. Only now are they getting serious about Veteran homelessness. Soon they might start admitting the negative psychological effects of war. Next they might look into these same effects on the civilian affected by these wars, although that would require empathy.
- zoomaKabu, on 11/07/2009, -1/+5They can't remember because they are sycophants. Watch them bury this comment.
- kolop1, on 11/07/2009, -10/+14Ohbama promised out of Iraq. Remember that promise? It was a campaign promise. Remember?
- ChuckDees, on 11/07/2009, -2/+6Nope he pushed it from 16 months to 18 months not 24.
- kolop1, on 11/07/2009, -4/+8Yes, the time table was 16 months and now it's 24 months. Bush had a "time table" too. Just keep pushing the time table back and the idiots will defend it and say "Look there is a time table."
- blaco, on 11/07/2009, -0/+4I still don't get why we still have soldiers still in Iraq or Afganistan.... total waste of money and lives..... and we wonder why the economy is screwed..... simple answer billions of dollars spent on wasting of human lives
- Ghostwo, on 11/07/2009, -0/+4Obvious troll obviously isn't obvious enough.
- midnightliberty, on 11/07/2009, -0/+450,000 "residual" force, not counting private contractors. That is all I have to say Chuck.
- rmxz, on 11/07/2009, -0/+4I still wonder if he genuinely believed it when he said it in his campaings -- and only later found out that the president job's more just a figurehead of whatever organizations (oil companies? military contractors? aipac?) want the US in mid-east conflicts.
- davidw00t, on 11/07/2009, -2/+6You're a *****.
- seltaeb4, on 11/07/2009, -1/+5See, this is interesting.
Basically, we promise all this stuff—job training, healthcare, education, discipline—that many young men and women would simply not have access to otherwise.
But—here's the catch—you have to be trained to kill and ready to die on the whim of others. And as we've seen, those others rarely if ever have your interest in mind, will send you to kill and die so that others may profit, and they sure as HELL won't send their own kids along on the same missions.
In Europe, young men and women receive job training, healthcare, education and discipline without any risk to life or limb—but ZOMG, that's SOCIALISM!!!111!!one!!1!
America compels their young run through a gauntlet of death on behalf of the government to have a chance at self-betterment, at receiving the same social benefits that all other civilized, industrialized nations provide to their young as a matter of due course.
Some of our American kids have never seen a dentist in their LIFE before they join the military. If they're poor, then let their Goddamned teeth rot out of their heads, right? Unless and until they take an oath to relinquish their personal liberties, take up arms, and risk getting blown apart on some fraudulent foreign escapade. Then, it's OK for them to receive basic medical care, and we all pay for it.
Which system is more ***** up, do you think? Which is more worthy of us as Americans? - JoeParanoid, on 11/07/2009, -0/+3In the early days, you served 2 but you weren't constantly in combat zones as they are now. And there were no stop losses that sent you back on repeated tours. But, as one Vietnam vet pointed out, bad enough when you were drafted, but these boys enlisted: they're screeeeewwwwwwwed.
- inactive, on 11/07/2009, -0/+3the so called society was the one that failed them.
- DEEZED, on 11/07/2009, -2/+5I thought the democrats were going to get us out of the two "illegal wars" in 2006... Then Obama was supposed to get us out of the 2 wars... Change we can believe in.
- andyroo316, on 11/07/2009, -0/+3@Krakerjax
I do support the troops and, in fact, tend to support the ones that don't wanna be there even more than the ones that do (not that anyone 'wants' to be there, as such - I mean the sorts of people that join due to your first and last questions, that's all).
I'm just saying that these people that join it for the wrong reasons shouldn't be allowed to join it in the first place, because they obviously aren't as suited to the environment as much as the ones that want to make a difference for themselves, their country and their fellow man. - pimpofpixels, on 11/07/2009, -1/+4I'm running out of patience for ending our foreign invasions, but you're buried for misspelling Obama.
- iimjpii, on 11/07/2009, -0/+3What's more important- the reputation of the U.S. or people's lives?
- kd1s, on 11/07/2009, -0/+3Part of this is the repeated deployments because the U.S. military is seriously undermanned right now. This pretty much shoots down the Republican mantra that they're strong supporters of the military.
If we really want to put down the rebellions in Afghanistan (And Iraq for that matter) we need to follow the original plan set out by the U.S State Department. 350,000 troops in Iraq, and about the same in Afghanistan.
To do this would mean we'd have to implement the draft again. I strongly doubt Obama would do something so unpopular. Even George W. Bush wasn't that stupid. But he was stupid enough to try to do wars on the cheap. - andyroo316, on 11/07/2009, -0/+3Okay, fine, you can't tell.
Wanting to be there isn't always indicative of a strong will to fight. And in fact, when that will isn't there, you will only get weaker (to the point of breaking) in an environment like a war. You said it yourself - some are there for money/healthcare/etc or because they feel forced into it by family traditions.
Those are the guys I feel truly sorry for. That's all I meant and I thought I made that clear, already. - GrammerPants, on 11/07/2009, -0/+3It's not gay if its in the army.
- iancgi, on 11/07/2009, -1/+4dont hold your breath
- HexxAngel, on 11/07/2009, -0/+2TransAfghan pipeline
- birge, on 11/07/2009, -0/+2actually, we're headed there anyway, and the wars themselves cost hundreds of billions. doesn't stop anybody, does it? that's one of the benefits of owning the printing press for money.
- Archades54, on 11/07/2009, -0/+2To follow orders blindly & carry out actions which can kill/maim civilians etc, I am sure the soldiers are asking themselves why they do it.
But at the end of the day they did choose willingly to join the military, they weren't drafted. There are times to take personal responsibility for ones actions, if you are the one that drops a bomb that might kill some bad guys and some good guys, you are still responsible even if you were ordered to do so. You have the ability to say no, sure you'll be punished but the finger on the trigger is yours.
The soldiers weren't the ones to make the decision to go, but they're the final decision on causing death whether for the greater good, accident, or a bad reason.
"You should be looking at the politicians and crying wolf. You *should* be out talking to people about these things. Taking action. But you don't. You are just as guilty for not doing anything about it here as the soldiers are over in Iraq. The only difference is, the soldier is fighting for his life. What are you doing?"
True however you might be labelled a traitor, though what actions can really work? sabotage engines of the machines of war to delay them? Good way to get killed n labelled a traitor/terrorist/againstus. Protests happen all the time, but they don't really seem to do much, the only real thing someone could do is try get into power and go against the grain but this is a very difficult task especially without support from others in power.
Hopefully who the people elect will work in the best interests for a country, but short of taking arms again and rising up to defeat the government what can you really do?
The blame lies with pretty much every human that stands by and lets bad ***** happen, we're a vicious breed us humans. - midnightliberty, on 11/07/2009, -1/+3And what is your breaking point? 18 months? Two years? Three years?
I have a feeling some Obama partisans might never admit they were wrong, just as the core Bush partisans ignored the spending/wars/FISA/Patriot Act as long as he promoted abstinence only and a defense of marriage act. - WhoDoneIt, on 11/07/2009, -1/+3Learn about the term "Suicide by Cop" and you'll understand what the shooter at Fort Hood was probably after.
- HornyAngel, on 11/07/2009, -0/+2Well, if it can treat PTSD, it seems to me it does have a valid medical use.
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