MikeK
Gold Member
The things our military is involved in today in the Middle East no way compares with the glorious purpose and performance of those troops who defended our Country in Europe and the Pacific during World War Two.
Some time ago I watched the video of a U.S. soldier carrying the lifeless body of a little girl wounded when a U.S. helicopter strafed the van she was riding in with her father. U.S. Soldier on 2007 Apache Attack: What I Saw | Danger Room | WIRED This incident calls to mind similar stories I've heard about civilian casualties in Vietnam.
And while I'm sure there were examples of civilian casualties during the battles of WW-II the critical difference was they occurred during a necessary, defensive war. A comforting justification.
No such justification exists for the consequences of our actions in Vietnam, or in Baghdad, and now in Afghanistan. And no matter how successful the propagandists are at convincing the troops their actions are defending America there is a percentage of those troops who are capable of understanding, and are willing to understand, it simply isn't true and that there was no good reason for us to be in Vietnam or Iraq. And the result of that awareness is the strikingly high number of troop suicides and PTSD cases we are seeing.
The more I read and hear about Bowe Bergdahl the more inclined I am to believe he is a classic example of PTSD.
Some time ago I watched the video of a U.S. soldier carrying the lifeless body of a little girl wounded when a U.S. helicopter strafed the van she was riding in with her father. U.S. Soldier on 2007 Apache Attack: What I Saw | Danger Room | WIRED This incident calls to mind similar stories I've heard about civilian casualties in Vietnam.
And while I'm sure there were examples of civilian casualties during the battles of WW-II the critical difference was they occurred during a necessary, defensive war. A comforting justification.
No such justification exists for the consequences of our actions in Vietnam, or in Baghdad, and now in Afghanistan. And no matter how successful the propagandists are at convincing the troops their actions are defending America there is a percentage of those troops who are capable of understanding, and are willing to understand, it simply isn't true and that there was no good reason for us to be in Vietnam or Iraq. And the result of that awareness is the strikingly high number of troop suicides and PTSD cases we are seeing.
The more I read and hear about Bowe Bergdahl the more inclined I am to believe he is a classic example of PTSD.