U.S. War Veterans and PTSD Awareness
This is still close to my heart. I don't know any veterans, I don't know of anyone going through this. I still want to help out with some kind of reintegration non profit or 'process'. There is one organization in Denver that does something about military reintegration; One Freedom.
Below is video from a class project (not related to this organization). For most of us, it's nothing new. But..it's an acknowledgement for those who need it. With more troops being sent to Afghanistan, I see this reintegration business being needed for quite a while. And it shouldn't. I despise the politics behind these wars. Wouldn't it be great if there was some great awakening and people would seize to join the military? Nobody's life is worth the political crap-games that is being played. And that's all I have to say about that.
I'll dedicate this to Jim. Hope your boys come home safe and sound.
Below is video from a class project (not related to this organization). For most of us, it's nothing new. But..it's an acknowledgement for those who need it. With more troops being sent to Afghanistan, I see this reintegration business being needed for quite a while. And it shouldn't. I despise the politics behind these wars. Wouldn't it be great if there was some great awakening and people would seize to join the military? Nobody's life is worth the political crap-games that is being played. And that's all I have to say about that.
I'll dedicate this to Jim. Hope your boys come home safe and sound.
posted by Ingrid at
6:15 PM
8 Comments:
I live for the day when one of the posters of my youth might be realized, "What if they gave a war and nobody came?"...
But every few years, the war machine gets cranked up, and powerful men with their own agendas, nothing to lose and everything to gain, send youngsters off to fight and die. They fill their heads with jingoistic patriotism and courageous hero stories, but in the end, it's all death and destruction. By the time that particular generation figures it out, it's the next generation's turn.
Ingrid, I do know vets, my hub & my father for two. Every vet I know says the same thing: if they'd truly known what it was all about, they'd never have joined. A rational army WOULD run!
But sadly, the economic slide we are on now will be ensure many military recruits for some time. Not to mention the insidiousness of the neocon's idea for perpetual war, hamstringing us for decades to fight for lies.
I've got to the point of thinking of PTSD as something of a *Perennial* Traumatic Stress Disorder. For so many people in this world -- from soldiers in combat to family members who live with chronic abuse to ordinary people whose lives are consumed with just getting through a day alive and with some food in their bellies -- daily existence is traumatic. Trauma and shock seem to be more of a norm than a relatively stable and serene existence ... My heart goes out to combat veterans ... My husband is ex-military and he's had his own life-threatening moments.
War is hell, wherever we wage it ...
Thanks Ingrid!
I am getting there and am almost back to normal but we have another storm coming Friday and then Sunday.
Anyway, I was talking to the son that is my biggest concern today. Seems to be doing much better though getting very disgruntled after seeing first hand the military falling apart and the way the UCMJ screws over good people. He is still determined to finish his 20!
As I said, he is hardcore but his problems with multiple combat tours seems to be fine as he has channeled to his family and making those in the military professional.
Another son and I stopped by Charleston to see another son getting ready to redeploy for the umpteenth time but he doesn't concern me as he is in the air.
Their youngest brother is army combat engineers and they are after him to be a sapper! He is coming home on the 20th! He is going to white sands NM to train for a new unit not yet known to him.
Knowing the future you have to be concerned not only about physical harm but mental which is my biggest concern!
Hi Ingrid
Don't know if you go to Daave Dubya's but I thought you should see my response to him as it is related!
Why do theY sign up and go? We no longer have a draft. What drives so many to become soldiers? There is PTSD aplenty without the wars of ours or others aggression. When we had a draft, I understood that so many had no choice. That made it possible for us to unite against a war and protest in massive numbers to make our feelings known.
If we were taking on the genocidal nations to prevent such monstrosities, if our military had two missions--to protect us from invasion or to prevent wide scale atrocities or famine, more like a peace corp rather than a war machine, I could understand and support it. But, to my knowledge the only wars we fought in my lifetime that weren't wars of aggression on our part were WWII and Bosnia.
Hi Utah
To some it is Patriotism, to some the draw of the military mantra, To some there is nothing else especially in rural America!
Two of my sons went in for all those reasons. The youngest went in because he had nothing else but despite hating Bush they all love it.
They say as I said a long time ago and that is that the destroyed economy has enlistments way up! With more than mixed feelings I can only shake my head!
The War Machinists will continue to throw fresh meat into their machines until there's no meat left; the meat, of course, being humanity's youth.
My husband served for two years and he remains horrified that he's been taught how to kill another person in an instant, with only his hand. He can't shake the cruelty of military culture and he says that soldiers become crazed by the paradox that they bond as brothers with their peers -- they become kin to one another in a way no one else can understand -- while at the same time they're ordered to destroy other people.
There's a desperate love that comes forth among soldiers under fire, aside a conditioned contempt for certain other humans -- those labelled "the enemy." Soldiers are crazed by seeing their brothers explode into gore and they're crazed by what they have to do to survive. They're crazed by the order to murder their own kind.
I've had PTSD since infancy (premature birth at seven months and long stay in a NICU -- constant state of alarm and physical invasion via procedures; no bonding with my mother -- it was 1959) and I sense that the depth of trauma that soldiers can experience is a thousand times worse.
The key to it, I think, is that soldiers are first and foremost trained to kill their fellow human beings. How can that *not* warp a mind and poison a soul?
thank you for blogging on this..you know how I feel about it...and that is something I hold dear...because I worry daily that there are too manyh hurting souls wandering around here....not getting the care they need....
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