The Psychic Costs of Wars
FOCUS: Army Admits Violating Geneva Convention
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/032705X.shtml
FOCUS | Army Admits 24 Homicides, Refuses to Try 17 Accused
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/032605Z.shtml
FOCUS | From War Hero to Homeless
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/032605Y.shtml
WHITE HOUSE LETTER
President Bush's New Public Face: Confident and 'Impishly
Fun'
By ELISABETH BUMILLER
White House officials say that the frisky president people
are seeing in public is simply the one he has kept private
for the last four years.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/28/politics/28letter.html?th&emc=th
......................................................................
After WW1 the term was "shell shocked." I don't recall a special term to describe either the WW2, Korean, or Viet Nam war returnees who were psychically blown away by the experiences of war, but I encountered a good number of them who had graduated onto the streets -- often after prison terms for their drinking and/or drug addictions that had started over there. One could moralize about such individuals, but let us remember that most were terribly young -- teens or not much older before they were thrown into situations far over their heads.
I well recall my special loving uncles who returned from WW2. While their sisters had all completed college and entered into productive lives -- several as professionals -- neither completed high school from which they had volunteered. Each had a 'drinking problem', and each got through lives vastly distorted by the nightmare experiences of war that each described in moments of extreme drunkenness -- a tent in italy with many buddies hit by a shell which killed all but my uncle, Ted. Bill's ship broke loose in a major French ammunition storage harbor (Cherbourg), plowing a huge gash in a loaded ammunition ship and barely avoided blowing it and the surrounding city to hell and beyond -- only sleeping crew members killed in their quarters where the bow of the ship happened to penetrate deeply.
We now call it post traumatic stress. It obviously kills something essential for good living in far too many young people thrust into the hell of killing or being killed.
Thus when one reads of the costs of today's wars one must agree with Machiavelli who wrote the original war handbook -- but who quotes Livy below in my signature. And we are even hiding the coffins of our war dead from public attention? This is not a time when one ought vacation blithely with the distractions presented to us by our visual and audio media.
--
"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort
to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy)
--
Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CollegeConversation
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PeaceEfforts
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EndingPoverty
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/440neighborhood
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/StudentConcerns
http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/032705X.shtml
FOCUS | Army Admits 24 Homicides, Refuses to Try 17 Accused
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/032605Z.shtml
FOCUS | From War Hero to Homeless
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/032605Y.shtml
WHITE HOUSE LETTER
President Bush's New Public Face: Confident and 'Impishly
Fun'
By ELISABETH BUMILLER
White House officials say that the frisky president people
are seeing in public is simply the one he has kept private
for the last four years.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/28/politics/28letter.html?th&emc=th
......................................................................
After WW1 the term was "shell shocked." I don't recall a special term to describe either the WW2, Korean, or Viet Nam war returnees who were psychically blown away by the experiences of war, but I encountered a good number of them who had graduated onto the streets -- often after prison terms for their drinking and/or drug addictions that had started over there. One could moralize about such individuals, but let us remember that most were terribly young -- teens or not much older before they were thrown into situations far over their heads.
I well recall my special loving uncles who returned from WW2. While their sisters had all completed college and entered into productive lives -- several as professionals -- neither completed high school from which they had volunteered. Each had a 'drinking problem', and each got through lives vastly distorted by the nightmare experiences of war that each described in moments of extreme drunkenness -- a tent in italy with many buddies hit by a shell which killed all but my uncle, Ted. Bill's ship broke loose in a major French ammunition storage harbor (Cherbourg), plowing a huge gash in a loaded ammunition ship and barely avoided blowing it and the surrounding city to hell and beyond -- only sleeping crew members killed in their quarters where the bow of the ship happened to penetrate deeply.
We now call it post traumatic stress. It obviously kills something essential for good living in far too many young people thrust into the hell of killing or being killed.
Thus when one reads of the costs of today's wars one must agree with Machiavelli who wrote the original war handbook -- but who quotes Livy below in my signature. And we are even hiding the coffins of our war dead from public attention? This is not a time when one ought vacation blithely with the distractions presented to us by our visual and audio media.
--
"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort
to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy)
--
Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CollegeConversation
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PeaceEfforts
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EndingPoverty
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/440neighborhood
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/StudentConcerns
http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
posted by Ed Kent at 9:31 AM
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