The Dark Memories They Carry

The Dark Memories They Carry

Transfixed by the ’08 election news mainstream media frame (myself included), we need to keep in mind that there is other news to report.

Yesterday, The New York Times published a feature, “Across America, Deadly Echoes of Foreign Battles,” that should be required reading for every American. This stunning report details the horrors our brave service men and women must endure after tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. The feature focuses on the fact that “at least 121 veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan committed a killing in this country, or were charged with one, after returning home from war.” However, Deborah Sontag and Lizette Alvarez, who authored the piece, go into greater depth about “combat trauma,” “survivors guilt,” “PTSD,” and the history of veterans returning home who carry with them the horrors they have seen.

Perhaps the most disturbing part of the report reveals that although we know more about PTSD and how it affects our veterans, there STILL seems to be a huge problem with diagnosing and evaluating this disorder BEFORE something horrible happens. In fact, sadly enough, diagnoses and evaluations often come after the fact: after a suicide, after a homicide, after another internal war that the brave veteran must experience and may possibly lose.

Addendum: Check this out at The Huffington Post.

Shadows of Doubt

SHADOWS OF DOUBT

My father went to Vietnam. After being there during the tumult in ’68, he was a real fortunate son who came home in ’69. My father had few if any visible injuries; the psychological scars, though, are legible to my family and me to this day, some 38 years after his return. Make no mistake about it, we ARE VERY GRATEFUL for his duty and his safe return, and after reading The Day’s “Coming Home Wounded,” courtesy of the Associated Press, sometimes I don’t think we know how grateful we are. In short, the human price for war manifests itself in many different forms.

As the blogger at Drinking Liberally in Milford has duly noted this week, the troops recognize the failure of this war more so now than ever. They want and deserve to come home especially now that it’s become apparent that all benchmarks, reports, and first-hand accounts suggest Iraq spirals in failure.

Some officials are trying to do something about the war aside from just debating and spinning. Thanks to Senator Jim Webb’s proposed legislation, if soldiers were to be re-deployed, they at least deserve a well-earned rest. But no thanks to certain hawks, including Insane in the Membrane Captain Lieberman, that legislation never came to pass.

It seems that the troops don’t believe in the mission any more. It seems that their shadows of doubt arise from authentic experience, not press room spin. It seems that they are grounded in reality whereas Chimpy and toddler company continue in their arrested development of temper tantrums and ego-mania. It seems we need to listen to the soldiers’ misgivings, for they are, after all, on the front line.