- Top Features:
- War Room
- Glenn Greenwald
- Broadsheet
- Joan Walsh
- Camille Paglia
- Since You Asked
- Follow Salon:
Read other letters about this article
While saddened for the soldiers and their families that are experiencing the psychological pain of PTSD and other related disorders, I wonder how it is possible that after three years of combat, no has ever discussed the emotional trauma the children of Iraq must be experiencing.
The soldiers are 1)adults, 2)armed, 3)there voluntarily, and 4)provided resources and support to help deal with psychological issues. As a humanist, my concerns are greater for the children who have spent the past three years experiencing the horror of our sophisticated weaponry and not-so-sophisticated insurgent attacks. As the mother of a young child, I can't help but imagine the deep psychological wounds that must be ravaging so many Iraqi children.
In the West, we carefully examine the effects on children of being raised in violent environments, like ghettos, or of playing violent video games. How can we overlook and NEVER EVEN discuss the effects of daily, horrendous violence on young Iraqi minds? If American youth is suffering from being desensitized by violent television and games, we have created a generation of emotionally unstable, frustrated, and angry youth in Iraq and Afghanistan.
When people wonder incredulously how so many young Palestinians, Iraqis, and now Afghanis are willing to blow themselves up, they go to the old stand-by of blame the religion. If Islam was a violent religion, Muslims wouldn't live anywhere peacefully, and it wouldn't have taken a 9/11 to bring such warrantless blame on the religion. In this country we understand the psychology of such urban phenomenon as road rage, but we can't (or won't) understand the psychological state of a Palestinian teen raised in oppression and violence?
This world is so much more dangerous than it was three years ago. We have and continue to create terrorists with our irresponsible and illegal wars. The U.S. should be very concerned with not only the physical damage it will leave behind in Iraq, but with the emotional and psychological damage that will create monsters out of regular children.
