Read other letters about this article

• Thursday, December 21, 2006 07:38 AM

  My response was appropriate

  In fact, I toned it down. I try hard not to be one of those veterans who says, "If you never served, then keep your mouth shut."

  But in this case, this woman is typical of the kind of callousness I had to put up with when I came home some 38 years ago. It hasn't gotten much better.

  So I make no apology.

  SR, good point. The average age and education of the NGs is older and higher than ever. Most of them that I've met are better men and women than were in the military when I was in. However, there are far too many impressionable kids who are getting sucked in. The damned military recruiters are going into our high schools now and catching these mere boys at an age where proving your manhood seems like a high priority. The recruiters prey on these kids and fill their heads with shit.

  They think they are invincible and you can't tell them anything. "Army Strong," "The Few, the Proud, The Marines," the "Code" of Semper Fi and all that other nonsense gleams in their heads. Once they get to Iraq or Afghanistan, all that crap goes away real quick.

  Now to the point of Benjamin's report: From about 1969 through the pull out in 1973, there could not have been more than a dozen idiots serving in Vietnam who thought we were "winning." That's when grunts started questioning their commanding officers. That's when the fragging started. That's when some gung ho lieutenants got shot in the back.

  I agree with Benjamin's sources. Frustration over being betrayed by those in command and those in the Pentagon, who sent us to war, then fucked us over in a thousand ways, is a prime cause of chronic PTSD. After that, you tend not to trust people ever again.

  Let me caution all the optimistic folks who seem to think that PTSD resulting from combat can just be cured with some new miracle method. Just get a good therapist, or go to the VA and talk to the counselors is good advice. But to say you are going to evaporate the mental triggers inculcated from combat is unrealistic.

  I think people who talk like that not only have never been in a VA psych joint for a while, or served in combat, but worse, they want to believe in a quick fix and send the vets out the door cured. It doesn't work that way.

  —Garry Owen Read Garry Owen's other letters
  Permalink
  Flag
  Click "Submit Flag" if you feel this post is inappropriate. Explain why below if you wish.

  Cancel