Yes, war DOES brutalize people . . . .

[Jane Austin]

Which is just one more reason why war should be the LAST RESORT not the first one.

Where have these administration fools been for the past 60 years?

Even I knew that war can turn West Virginia farm kids into people their own families wouldn't recognise.

War is brutal, right? Therefore it brutalizes people.

It's a wonder any veterans can hold onto their sanity.

(And I know they can, of course. My father-in-law was one of the most humane and loving people I've ever known, and he was in two wars.)

God, I despies these Bush creeps.

[IrateCitizen]

1. Ummm... you should be able to answer your own question...

Where have these administration fools been for the past 60 years?

Nowhere close to anywhere shots were being fired in anger. That's why they can dismiss such realities so cavalierly.

[Jane Austin]

2. Well, neither have I

and I know it.

But then I read newspapers.

[IrateCitizen]

3. You probably also have a soul that isn't whithered and blackened

Yet another thing that sets you apart from those "administration fools".

[Jane Austin]

4. I try . . . .

Humming "Create In Me a Clean Heart" to keep from exploding.

[CWebster]

5. No one was willing to lance the festering boil of romanticized

war fever with Tweety gushing over what a stud Bush was in his padded playsuit and Kerry (are we allowed to discuss what is real here?)sabotaging democratic party potential by buying into the whole ego strutting soldier game. Disgusting, at a time when our young are dying and shipped home in the middle of the night or commiting war crimes. This is the best we got?

[Jane Austin]

6. Cod piece or Depends?

When I see that jet land (over and over again) I am struck by how Bush must have been about to wet his pants with excitement over landing the jet and struttin' over to declare victory.

Whaddaya think?

[DEMVET-USMC]

7. Of Course You Are Right Re: War Brutalizes People

My father and all my Uncles fought in WWII. I was always amazed at one of my Uncles who survived the war in that he was always so civil and kind to us children when he visited us. This man fought as an enlisted Marine from Guadal Canal to and including the Battle of Okinawa with the 1st Marine Division. He received a battlefield commission to 1st Lieutenant. Then he fought with the Marines in Korea, Viet Nam, and some of those smaller actions after that. To this day I cannot figure that man out. He retired as a Marine Colonel after 35 years in the Corps. The Viet Nam war alone made a mental wreck of me. He is still alive and in good health for a man his age. He remains a complete mystery to me. He never talks about the wars, but I know he killed many enemy soldiers and saw a very many fellow Marines die. That battlefield Commission was given him because all the officers that started out with his platoon were killed along with their replacements as the war dragged on. Go figure. ...Oscar

[Gordon25]

8. War brutalizes SOME people

As DEMVET points out in the post above, there are those capable of following a warrior's life path who yet retain a capacity for true compassion and kindness.

As a Marine Corps Vietnam vet myself with five years plus service, it is my experience that it is the lies told as part of the rationale for war which lead to the brutalization.

War has a way of forcing you to make choices which in any other situation you would never make. Example: It is night at an ambush site. You have a wounded teenage enemy fighter laying near you who is screaming in pain. The noise is going to give away your position and probably lead to you and all those with you being killed. You try to silence him with a hand over his mouth and the thrashing response provides a different but equally dangerous noise. You choose to cut his throat to save your own life and the lives of those comrades around you.

Those kinds of choices, in the aftermath, can be extremely difficult to deal with, but if you can believe in your heart that your reason for being in that situation in the first place is just, it makes the weight of the responsibility easier to bear.

If however, as was the case in Vietnam and now in Iraq, you find the reasons you were given for going to war were based on lies, that external justification which arises from a just cause, disappears. When you are left in that situation by your leaders, without a valid external justification for your actions, the process of brutalization begins because you now must begin the process of hardening yourself against the guilt and emotional pain arising from your actions.

You begin to wall off parts of yourself. You depersonalize the enemy because "things" do not give birth to guilt. You lie to yourself at first, and then to others. You refuse to see anything which calls into question the "reality" you have created as a justification. You hear, see, acknowledge only those things which reinforce your position. And when you have perfectly protected yourself and have built full personal justification for your actions, you have become capable of anything because these internal justifications are inevitably also built on lies.

The point being, it is lies in the justification for war which brutalize, not necessarily war itself.

This is a difficult idea, concept, experience to get into words. I apologize if I have not been clear. But personal experience leads me to believe it is an important point to ponder.

Gordon25

[Jane Austin]

9. You've been very clear,

and I thank you for your thoughts.

[plcdude]

10. and renew a right spirit within me

caste me not away from your presence and take not your holy spirit from me. Amen sister.

[Jane Austin]

12. That Psalm, especially put to music, is my

salvation some days.

[democratreformed]

11. I think you relayed this concept perfectly.

It is one of the reasons that I repeatedly say "If the soldiers need to believe they are fighting for our freedoms, I have no problem with that." I would never tell them otherwise, personally. It must be very difficult as it becomes harder and harder for them to hold on to the notion that they are there for a noble reason.

I am always thankful that I do not have any close family over there. Then, I would have to somehow brainwash myself into believing as well.

Also, what you have said makes my heart even heavier for the soldiers. Their actions are showing that they no longer believe in their cause.

My first reaction to the story was anger that the persons "really" responsible for these outrages will never get what they deserve. And THAT would be the people who sent them there under false pretenses.

That doesn't mean that I am any less outraged over the images and actions of those soldiers. But, I can feel the soldiers' outrage as well at being put in the position they were in. Does that make sense?

[Gordon25]

14. Yes it does, and thank you

Makes a lot of sense. I said in an earlier post today that I believe anyone who contributed anything at all to establishing the lie that Iraq was somehow responsible for or involved in 9/11 bore part of the responsibility for the mistreatment and torture documented in those photos and reports. Because I believe that lie led to these young men and women being able to justify their actions to themselves and each other by believing they were getting revenge for 9/11 - that they were somehow evening the score.

I'm not big on revenge but I believe it would be just if *, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell and crew each had to live for a month with the nightmares which will haunt these young men and women for years to come; and that their wives and loved ones had to wake at least one day filled with the anguish and fear family members of those soldiers will be feeling after seeing what they have become upon their return. After a few months in Afghanistan, one battalion of Fort Bragg returnees were involved in two suicides and, if memory serves, three murders of family members. Think about what 135,000 troops will bring home after a year plus in Iraq all based on lies.

God help and bless the wives, parents and families of these service people, for they will surely need it in the months ahead.

Gordon25

[democratreformed]

15. This makes me cry.

My heart is breaking not only for the families, but for our soldiers as well.

I did hear John McCain say something on CBS this morning about the lower soldiers should not be the ones to take the rap for this. That gives me hope.

[renegade000]

13. Dehumanization

period.