nonhocapito wrote:(...) Which means that separate groups of soldiers are trained to lie when they come back home, pretending they have seen battle, pretending they saw "the enemy".
So I wonder, the phenomena of the "Rambos" coming out of Vietnam; these stories of "devastated minds" so dear to Hollywood, immortalized over and over by movies like Apocalypse now, Hunter, Full Metal jacket: is that a purely fabricated, heavily hyped fantasy too? With no backing in reality because those stories too were part of warfare propaganda?
Ugh.
MILITARY SUICIDES IN AMERICA
The Greatest Threat to the US army personnel
Nonho,
I agree with you that the war scenarios may be very different (less deadly) than what we are told - and that all the deployed US soldiers may well be 'trained to lie' (or more bluntly,
forced to lie - by gag order) about their entire 'combat zone' experience. To be sure, I've been wondering for a decade now how the mighty US army could possibly lose scores of troopers every single week - on a regular basis - after their occupation of two utterly disbanded and disorganized countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan. As far as I know, the two nations have no armored vehicles, no sophisticated Apache combat-copters, no "state-of-the-art" killer-drones & F-18 bomber jets, no depleted uranium cluster bombs, nor anything remotely close to the US firepower. All we hear is that they keep whacking hapless US troopers with
"improvised explosive devices" or "
small-arms fire"! It is beyond silly to believe that the mighty, modern US army would be so fecking stupid to keep engaging and exposing their precious personnel in medieval-style street-to-street, man-to-man combat. Yet, that's exactly what we are told.
On the other hand, I fear that the reality of what you call the "stories of devastated minds" is even grimmer than what we are told - and that the countless tragic war veterans' stories of distress / emargination - leading to staggering suicide-rates among both active soldiers and veterans - are
not just pure fantasy. You may object that the below-listed figures are, once again, media & government-released - so who's to know how trustworthy they are. As we have now seen, the actual combat-related casualties are highly questionable. However, let us assume - for the purpose of discussion - that the below data is truthful :
COMBAT-RELATED CASUALTIES
- "An American soldier dies every day and a half, on average, in Iraq or Afghanistan."
YEARLY WAR VET SUICIDES
- "Veterans kill themselves at a rate of one every 80 minutes. More than 6,500 veteran suicides are logged every year — more than the total number of soldiers killed in Afghanistan and Iraq combined since those wars began."
- "For every soldier killed on the battlefield this year, about 25 veterans are dying by their own hands."
Source: (DOD and) NewYork Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/15/opini ... d=all&_r=0
Wow! Amazing. Ok, so that figure of 6500-yearly-suicides relates to
all US War Veterans of all past and present US wars, but if true, this is an absolutely mind-boggling figure! Let's put all this into perspective - and in simple words:
"FACT A" - ONE AMERICAN SOLDIER GETS KILLED ON THE BATTLEFIELD every 36 HOURS
"FACT B" - ONE AMERICAN SOLDIER / OR EX-SOLDIER KILLS HIM/HERSELF every 80 minutes
So what exactly is going on here? Why, why, why - do US army servicemen keep killing themselves in droves? To be sure, I am not alone in asking this question: check out this recent study (which even compares historical figures from the Civil War):
New Study: U.S. Military Suicide Rate Now Likely Double or Triple Civil War’s
"Military suicide rates doubled between 2001 and 2006, while remaining flat in the general population, with more military fatalities attributed to suicide than to actual combat in Afghanistan during that period.
To make matters worse, we do not understand why. Stressors related to military training, overseas deployment, transition back to civilian life, and combat are widely believed to be major driving factors."
Read more:
http://nation.time.com/2012/08/06/new-s ... z2N4pmBt4B
So they do not understand why. Why do so many servicemen commit suicide? Because of the horrors they have seen in the battlefields? Naah, unlikely. That is, if you accept the notion that modern US invasions in poor, disorganized nations cannot possibly cause the troops to experience the sort of dire trauma that would make anyone become suicidal. So what could possibly cause this widespread despair among the US army personnel? Of course, psychologists have been coming up with a slick, 'scientific' term for it: they have coined it the "Post Traumatic Stress Disorder"- or
"PTSD". That's right... You see, all those poor soldiers suffer from "PTSD", a mental disorder which - in the eyes of the general public - classifies these individuals as 'mentally disturbed' or quite simply 'insane'. All sorts of toxic/ psychotropic drugs are immediately prescribed to them - for their own good, as they say. Yet, they still end up killing themselves. We are told that the lines of veterans asking for help are so long that they cannot keep up with the growing demand for medical / psychological assistance.
Now. here's my point: what if the cause of these suicides has little / or nothing to do with the horrors of war? What if they are caused by the unbearable burden (
to most sane and intelligent individuals of particular integrity) of having to LIE for the rest of their lifetimes about what they experienced in their respective 'war zones'? What if the army servicemen/women who commit suicide are the REAL, unsung heroes of this planet who refuse to support the lies of the wretched military war machine under which they enrolled - at a young, innocent age?
More relevant sources and articles:
MILITARY SUICIDE RESEARCH CONSORTIUM
https://msrc.fsu.edu/research
Military Suicides Top Combat Deaths
http://nation.time.com/2013/01/16/milit ... re-ending/
Soldier Suicides, An Epidemic We Must Defeat
http://nation.time.com/2012/08/01/soldi ... st-defeat/
Army mom: Military suicides ‘out of control’
http://www.armytimes.com/news/2012/11/a ... ol-112512/
(some truly interesting reader comments here)
AMERICAN THINKER
http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/01/ ... _them.html
ICASUALTIES.ORG
http://icasualties.org/
DoDSER - Department of Defense Suicide Report:
http://t2health.org/sites/default/files ... Report.pdf
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Here's a Pakistani article worth reading:
2,676 Suicides of American Soldiers - by Munu Bhai
It has been said that from 2001 to 2013, the world’s most terrifying combat power in the history of mankind, and the only super power in the world, America, has lost 1,950 soldiers in its war on terror in the world’s weakest and the most underdeveloped country, Afghanistan. However, after Navy SEAL W. Price’s apparent suicide, the number of American soldiers who committed suicide during this period in Afghanistan reached 2,676. This means that 726 more soldiers committed suicide than were killed on active duty in Afghanistan.
http://watchingamerica.com/News/192359/ ... -soldiers/
Well, here's how this SEAL W. Price is remembered in the official "HONOR THE FALLEN" memorial:
http://www.militarytimes.com/valor/navy ... ce/6568399