A US soldier in Afghanistan: "He killed so many people. He’s checked out."

[WilliamPitt]

NYT:

One full-moon night I was sitting outside a sandbag-reinforced hut with Kearney when a young sergeant stepped out hauling the garbage. He looked around at the illuminated mountains, the dust, the rocks, the garbage bin. The monkeys were screeching. “I hate this country!” he shouted. Then he smiled and walked back into the hut. “He’s on medication,” Kearney said quietly to me.

Then another soldier walked by and shouted, “Hey, I’m with you, sir!” and Kearney said to me, “Prozac. Serious P.T.S.D. from last tour.” Another one popped out of the HQ cursing and muttering. “Medicated,” Kearney said. “Last tour, if you didn’t give him information, he’d burn down your house. He killed so many people. He’s checked out.”

More: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/24/magazine/24afghanistan-t.html?pagewanted=3&hp

First page of story: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/24/magazine/24afghanistan-t.html?pagewanted=1&hp

Long, but worth it.

[UpInArms]

1. tragic

more from your link:

As Giunta said, “The richest, most-trained army got beat by dudes in manjammies and A.K.’s.” His voice cracked. He was not just hurting, he was in a rage. And there was nothing for him to do with it but hold back his tears, and bark — at the Afghans for betraying them, at the Army for betraying them. He didn’t run to the front because he was a hero. He ran up to get to Brennan, his friend. “But they” — he meant the military — “just keep asking for more from us.” His contract would be up in 18 days but he had been stop-lossed and couldn’t go home. Brennan himself was supposed to have gotten out in September. He’d been planning to go back to Wisconsin where his dad lived, play his guitar and become a cop.

Sandifer was questioning why they were sticking it out in the Korengal when the people so clearly hated them. He was haunted by Mendoza’s voice calling to him: “I’m bleeding out. I’m dying.” He worried that the Korengal was going to push them off the deep end. In his imagination it had already happened. One day an Afghan visited their fire base, Sandifer told me. “I was staring at him, on the verge of picking up my weapon to shoot him,” he said. “I know right from wrong, but even if I did shoot him everyone at the fire base would have been O.K. We’re all to the point of ‘Lord of the Flies.’ ” And they still had 10 months to go in the Korengal.

[NNN0LHI]

2. How can someone kill people who never did anything to us and feel good about themselves?

Sounds like a bridge too far to me.

Don

[soulcore]

3. THAT is the true horror of war.

The absolute and complete loss of one's humanity.

[gratuitous]

6. And yet I just get blank stares

When I quote Alexander Mack and say that All War Is Sin. But the parades! The bombs bursting in air and the rockets' red glare! Duty, honor, integrity! The High Church of Redemptive Violence demands that we kill our enemies, just as they must kill us. There just isn't any other way to settle differences and disputes. And so we sent out young people, drunk on myths of glory, halfway around the world to find out that no matter how heavily armed and well-trained you are, a bunch of camel jockeys wearing manjammies can still kick your ass from time to time.

But peace takes so very long, and costs so much money. War is quicker and cheaper.

[walldude]

10. Good post but I have to disagree about peace..

Peace doesn't cost shit. That's why there's no peace. There's no money in it.

[qwertyMike]

11. Pardon me

The US is not at WAR in Afghanistan or Iraq

They are the to make peace (/sarcasm)

Mick

[GreenPartyVoter]

4. Not good!

[onethatcares]

5. coming soon, to a street corner near you

and many others with the same problems.

[DemoTex]

8. I had a cousin who spent 3 tours with the USMC in Viet Nam .. I-Corps.

He had the 1000-yard stare after the first tour. He was a raving mad killer after the second tour. After the third tour, he was quiet. Always quiet. He returned to Dallas and killed himself the slow way .. drink and drugs. As far as I know, after his third tour, he never physically hurt anyone else, except himself.

[dave123williams]

7. So, I guess this is what 'spreading freedom' is all about.

I can't BELIEVE it's NOT FREEDOM!

[Bucky]

9. One of the downsides of having a permanent military class in our society

It really concentrates the trauma of constant warfare onto the few strong enough & giving enough to shoulder the burden.

I hope everyone understands we're still fighting to win the mission in Afghanistan because we diverted the resources needed away to a dreamed up mission in Iraq. Sadly, we later helped the dream come true.

[Disturbed]

12. The Afghanistan Failure

The Afghanistan Failure
By MIKE WHITNEY

Afghanistan is a tragic example of American foreign policy run amok. The promises of liberation and reconstruction have only generated more suffering and death." Operation Enduring Freedom" was nothing more than a marketing ploy designed to project American military power into the region and secure long-coveted pipeline routes. It has created a situation that is more unstable than before. A recent report from Kim Sengupta confirms this; "The UK Independent has learned that an all-party group of MPs from the Foreign Affairs Committee has returned from a visit to the country shocked and alarmed by what they witnessed. They warn that urgent action must be taken to save Afghanistan from plunging further into chaos because of Western neglect."
This is the reality of the Afghanistan campaign; a nation teetering towards anarchy because it fit nicely into the global designs of a handful of fanatics in Washington. It is a reality that has been scrupulously omitted from the establishment press because it doesn't exemplify the virtue of American warmongering. A faithful rendering of the facts of the Afghanistan war would convince the American people that it was a cruel and cynical misadventure that never should have taken place. Nearly, three years after the end of major hostilities, the country is still more fractured and unsettled than ever. Large swaths of the country are engaged in an unreported war and the drug trade is fueling even greater instability. The Taliban have been replaced by the equally misogynist warlords who rule with an iron fist and have a similar disregard for basic human rights.

http://www.counterpunch.org/whitney06022004.html

[Diclotican]

13. WilliamPitt

WilliamPitt

This war, have produced a lot of this and I am afraid that this is just top of the iceberg.. When others are coming home, who may not are so clear as this examples are brewing for a long time home, and then explode who would be to blame?.. They who was sending this sad souls to their "death" or the veterans who never came home... physical they come home but mental they are broke, and will never come home in one pice

How many helpless soldiers will end their days as beggars, dead under a highway or in some infested cloak some where...?

How many american would end their life this way, because they are dead inside?

This is just tragedy in the highest potents...

Diclotican

Sorry my bad long language, not my native language

[knitter4democracy]

14. I know some knitter military wives. I worry for them.

One has been so upset lately. All her hubby does when they talk on the phone is scream and yell at her for whatever he can think up (she deposited a check a day late, and he ranted and raved for the whole phone call--that's just one of her examples). She has an 18 month old and a 4 month old and isn't anywhere near family. She's doing what she can to survive but is seriously frightened about him coming back like this.

Everyone pays for war, no matter what the idiot box says.

[Karenina]

16. And she is right to be frightened...

I hope she is able to be proactive in protecting her children and her own life. :cry:

[AnotherDreamWeaver]

15. Confirmed, everything I imagined would go wrong when this war started did.

It took me a long time to read through the whole piece. Very sad. I still believe we went into this war to build an oil pipeline there. Now I think we stay to keep it protected.