Home > The Silent Scream: Might as well be dead?
Wars and conflicts Governments USA
"Is all that we see or seem but a dream within a dream?"....Edgar Allen Poe
Some soldiers are luckier than others, that’s for damned sure. Many have been ordered back to the Zone for up to 4 additional tours in Hell. They comply,and in general they don’t complain; but they do wonder if this crazy military adventure/holy war is important enough to die for. Some who do just that never resolved the question.
Thousands come home on stretchers, and hundreds more in boxes. Few are seen but all are welcomed with tears,anguish, shame,pride,anger...you name it. One way or the other it’s good to have them home. Better still if they’re not headed back in a few months because Georgie needs more flag wrapped fodder.
These poor souls who survive may never be the same boys they were pre 9/11. It’s almost as if fate had designed their lives for them. So many commanders in this wretched "war" used the "Heathen Muslim who attacked us on 9/11" as the thrust for the revenge gene. It worked. Many were the tools of religious mania generated by the likes of Falwell and Robertson. They may change their minds some day. If they live that long.
Most soldiers who return will never be able to sleep well again. Many saw blood soaked bodies of women and children (some of them our doing), headless corpses, rotting and bloated floaters in the Tigris,and twiste bodies on stretchers on the way to a medic or a coroner. The minds of these young troops,male and female,may never come to grips with what they witnessed as fighters, and even what they personally caused....right or wrong. Guilt is everpresent and will persist until the end of their days.
All the while these brave young soldiers will have to deal with debilitating or disabling wounds, both physical and spiritual. In the end there’s no escape. Lives are altered, wives and former lovers depart, and jobs vanish. The future may seem dim and impossible but it’s there and must be dealt with.
Some will make it. Many won’t. Perhaps on some future occasion years from today, when the nightmares have ceased and new paradigms have replaced childish motives which led to his disaster, a soldier, late at night in the silent darkness of his soul may finally conclude that Bush was wrong and that war is never the solution to anything.
Perhaps.
Forum posts
20 May 2007, 13:00
your right, we should have allowed Hitler and his ilk to rule the world. After all "war is not the answer" besides, resistance is futile, right?
20 May 2007, 16:01
I think you missed the point here. War is man’s crocodile brain’s answer to any threat,real or perceived. The Dept. Of Defense should be just that: War for defense only. In England it’s called the Dept of War.
Korea,Viet Nam, Gulf "war" 1, Afghanistan, Iraq...all were NOT declared WARS...and they were all based on perceived threats.
Sure, once in a great while countries must recognize TRUE threats like those of WW II...that one WAS declared a war. Otherwise, we should have to PROVE a threat before we thrust our troops in harm’s way.
villy
22 May 2007, 07:48
Only problem with that approach is it usually cost thousands or millions of innocent lives. the old tale German tale "until they came for me, and no one was left."
23 May 2007, 04:58
Being that it is the 21st century, maybe its time to reexamine the rules of war, a simple tweaking of the laws and voila instantly the ultimate solution arises. When all diplomacy efforts have failed and conflict is imminent between 2 countries , then the 2 leaders should sit down to dinner, then exchange concessions each country wants from the other, then if the 2 leaders cant come to a solution, then take 10 paces turn and fire, to the winner goes the spoils , war over.