It is nothing new to combat situations.
The stress of daily exposure to possible immediate death requires measures that are not in the army manual.
In an economy of opportunity, geographically close to the producers of the poppy and the cannabis sativa, availability is all.
Imagine what it would be like to be several months without ‘normal happiness’ – to be an ‘automaton’ sent out almost every day in harm’s way.
Surrealism needs a surrealistic answer.
And has anybody thought about what will happen when these surrealists return home?
I know what happened to a lot of my brothers in Nam, and what the result of returning home was.
Fortunately, these boys and girls are going to be at least welcomed, that will be a saving grace, too little too late ; )
Now their going to come home to a mountain of bills, evictions, foreclosures, divorce, no benefits to speak of, and a country that is lying in waste from the robber barrons. It’s gonna be tough, no way around it, unless the people stand together and change the situation.
Yeah, I forgot your personal experience of Vietnam, IP.
My diary was stimulated by news yesterday of mounting drug problems with troops in Iraq. But you bring up the more important aspect – which is the return to altered lives.
the sad thing is, they go hand in hand, one begats the other, as if they don’t have enough to deal with allready, then to return to a life of shambles, it will be devastating to most.
It will be the time when they need the most from our support of the people, and most of all, the government, health, financial, etc. etc…I fear there will be a wave of trauma to beset our returning troops, so sad.
I read elsewhere today there is an increasing feeling among the troops that the burden of this ‘war’ is only being carried by them and their families. None of the politicians dare ask that all civilians would help out – whether paying more taxes, rationing gas or any other ‘sacrifice’ to support the troops.
That says a great deal about the American nation.
Our “leader” to us Duhmericans to go back to our lives, go shopping and let them handle it all.
WHAT????
The entire world, our entire nation, EVERYONE wanted to know what we could do, what could we do… and Bush said “go shopping”.
He makes me sick and angry and resolved every damn day.
Not to in any way detract from the horrors of being in actual combat, but I wanted to point out that this is pretty much the same situation millions of children find themselves in because of the “war” on drugs.
The violence and trauma are there. The constant stress. The world that is unpredictable and makes no sense. Plus, poverty, hunger, and drugs flowing around more common than currency, all from childhood. There are parts of Los Angeles, and I’m sure other places, that 911 doesn’t respond to.
Sorry to go off topic, but you bring out an important point about war and describe it really well. Much of it is applicable to both wars.
Your comment is not off topic at all.
It is clear that daily exposure to a very unpredictable and dangerous local reality, whether caused by war, poverty or terror, has a deeply stressful effect on those within the situation.
That stress is going to manifest itself in the desire to seek behavioural change at some point. It depends on what ‘agents of change’ are available. It might be guns (to boost power), it might be drugs (to change perceptions if reality), or it might be just words..
The words here at BT seem to me to be driven often by a desire to deal with the symptoms I describe above.
Report of a few years ago found kids in Compton were suffering from PTSD.
They will become invisible until needed for political “capital”. They will return to their families – drugs or no – somehow changed in ways that their families will not understand.
This is it: unless the people stand together and change the situation.
Right now it seems the entire progressive movement can’t find it’s ass with both hands. Not helpful.
Bush Inc and their ilk will probably imprison the returning troops who fought the “war on terror” for being insurgents in the “war on drugs”.