battle scars

I came across this article and was struck by several things about it. First, I'm glad that someone took the time to draw a parallel with what our men and women Iraq and Afghanistan are going through and how little they get when they come home.

Whether or not they support the war, there is not a person I know that doesn't support the troops. This opinion is often not adequately conveyed in conversation most times, so if you are against the war itself, chances are you have been shunned and had some anti-american bullshit spewed out at you by any of a zillion super conservative knuckleheads who think that the troops and the war are one in the same and that they are the moral authority on both.

Here's a newsflash for all you republicans who think that the war is just and that you have the monopoly on god: an amazing number of the boys and girls that are over busting their asses and living in uncomfortable, dusty, suicide-bomber ridden squalor don't want to be there. They think the war is bullshit and that our commander in chief is a fucking moron. It so happens I agree with them, but that's not the point. The point is that all of those people are setting their opinions aside daily to do the job they have to do well, and to protect their best friends and fellow military servants to the best of their abilities. They are putting their lives on the line because they have to and because they care about each other.

So then, after having fulfilled a duty over which they have little to no control, they come home. Although they are, for the most part, receiving hero's welcomes by their friends, co-workers and families, their former employer, the trusty US government, is writing them off and hanging them out to dry. Terrible benefits, little to no counseling, and virtually nothing to help them on with the rest of their lives. Most of these people started out without privilege and come back to find their hometowns have not changed and that all of the problems they left behind have worsened or remained the same. Add to that the fact that they are now heavily leaned on by their families and peers because of the discipline they gained in the military, and the stress continues to mount.

So now we have trained "killing machines" (as many of them will refer to themselves), coming home to personal stress, financial hardship and little to no counseling or support and they begin to commit crimes and sully their good names with bad behavior. Can you blame them? Who knows what to do when you've been away for years, in a combat zone for much of it, yet when you return, what you're coming back to doesn't seem so different from what you left?

Maybe as the numbers rise and people begin to draw more and more parallels to the vets who came back from Vietnam, things will change. Because the public (ironically) is getting that it's not the soldier's fault, but the government still seems to be in the dark. Shocker.