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 Oregon Army National Guardsmen return home after a year-long deployment to Iraq. Coming HomeMonday 09 August 2010 by: Camillo "Mac" Bica, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed From Warrior to Warrior: Now that you have returned home from Iraq and Afghanistan and the killing and dying has ended, I wish I could tell you that your hell is over, that time will heal all wounds, even those of the mind and the spirit. I would like to give you hope that the nightmares and the memories of the horror will eventually fade and your life will be as it was before. But to do so, I believe, would be to continue the lie that has victimized you and so many others. You see, as a Marine Corps officer in Vietnam, I have seen the futility, the waste and the insanity of war, and, as a veteran, have experienced the difficulties of transition, of living life in its aftermath. After much soul searching and years of self-chastisement, I have accepted, albeit hesitantly and uneasily, responsibility and culpability for my actions and, at long last, have eventually managed, somewhat, to forgive myself. Or at least to live with what I had done and what I became. So, while others may offer you a façade of honor and glory, or "comfort" you (and themselves) with illusions of war's grandeur, I will offer you nothing but the truth, what I see as the reality of war and of coming home, a reality attested to by tens of thousands of psychological, emotional and moral casualties and by a long and disgraceful history of American neglect and maltreatment of its returning warriors.(1) The truth is that no one who has truly experienced war escapes its ravages unscathed. No one is ever made whole again. Like it or not, that is our reality, yours and mine. As a "grateful" nation "welcomes" you home and "thanks you" for your service, they will begrudge you your "benefits" and deny you the care you require to treat the physical, psychological, emotional and moral injuries inevitable in war. And war's deleterious effects are not yours alone. Family and friends won't understand why you have changed, but will try desperately to help you "get over it," to "put the war behind you," and to "go on with your life," as though being affected by war is a conscious decision we make. But when it becomes apparent that the effect and impact of war is deep seated and complex and beyond their capability to remedy, they will grow discouraged by their helplessness, frustrated by the lack of assistance forthcoming from a government bound by contract "to care for him/her who shall have borne the battle," and dismayed by the indifference and lack of concern from a nation that mouths meaningless rhetoric of gratitude, concern and support. All that remains is to mourn the loss of innocence of the child they sent to war. Truly, war's devastation is far reaching.
But how does one "get over" such horror? Wars come and go, eventually becoming the stuff for historians to record and politicians to reinterpret. America will quickly forget, if they noticed at all, the death and destruction prosecuted in their name, and go on with their consumer-driven lives as though the horror and atrocities never occurred. For you, however, the war will never end, and though years may pass, you will remember it as though it were yesterday, the feelings, the sights, the sounds and the smells.
You will forever hear the screams of the wounded reverberate through your mind and relive endlessly the final tragic moments of a young life cut short by war as you lovingly held and comforted a dying comrade in your arms. You will remember the frustration and futility, the ambiguity of purpose and conflict of principles. You will remember that in unnecessary and immoral wars of aggression and occupation, there was no coherent strategy, no method to the madness, only killing and being killed. You will remember the confusion and that, in the struggle to survive the next improvised explosive device or suicide bomber, everyday living became a netherworld of horror and insanity in which life lost all meaning. As an inevitable consequence of war's dehumanization and desensitization to death and destruction, judgments of right and wrong - morality - oftentimes became irrelevant, and brutality and atrocity a primal response to an overwhelming threat of annihilation. You will remember how life amid the violence, death, horror, trauma, anxiety and fatigue of war eroded our moral being, undid character and reduced decent men and women to savages capable of incredible cruelty that would never have been possible before being sacrificed to war. And for this we must suffer.
I would like to tell you that America, the nation you love and chose to serve, appreciates your sacrifices and honors your service. But in reality, those who oppose the war and occupation believe you are at best misguided, at worst, a murderer. For the rest, their gratitude and appreciation is all pretense, a charade choreographed by war criminals to further mislead an uninformed and apathetic citizenry of sheep in order to encourage their continued indifference and/or support for their agenda of killing and destruction. For most, members of the military are cannon fonder, an expendable commodity to be exploited when political leaders and corporate magnates believe it profitable and in their interest. Henry Kissinger made this quite clear, "Military men are just dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy." In addition, when you are no longer useful and have served their purpose, they will abandon you to face the demons of war alone, no longer a "hero," but a nuisance, a burden on the economy and a reminder of a war America would rather forget. |
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