For me, any war movie is bad enough to convince me of the horrors of this legalized violence. Of course that's Hollywood....real life is much worse. Thousands of dead civilians, combatants who accept to lose their lives for some sort of "cause" and that doesn't even begin to describe the hellish reality of modern warfare, such as the use of white phosphorous gas and many other chemical agents. Many war hawks will tell me this is necessary to win the battle and blah blah blah.
Well, what about our soldiers when they come home. Should they just suck it up and live a normal life? Maybe some can, but many cannot. The NY Times story this weekend on Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and the propensity for violence after the battlefield has to stir something in even the hardest of souls.
From The NY Times:
Mr. Sepi did not like to venture outside too late. But, plagued by nightmares about an Iraqi civilian killed by his unit, he often needed alcohol to fall asleep. And so it was that night, when, seized by a gut feeling of lurking danger, he slid a trench coat over his slight frame — and tucked an assault rifle inside it.
“Matthew knew he shouldn’t be taking his AK-47 to the 7-Eleven,” Detective Laura Andersen said, “but he was scared to death in that neighborhood, he was military trained and, in his mind, he needed the weapon to protect himself.”
Head bowed, Mr. Sepi scurried down an alley, ignoring shouts about trespassing on gang turf. A battle-weary grenadier who was still legally under-age, he paid a stranger to buy him two tall cans of beer, his self-prescribed treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder.
As Mr. Sepi started home, two gang members, both large and both armed, stepped out of the darkness. Mr. Sepi said in an interview that he spied the butt of a gun, heard a boom, saw a flash and “just snapped.”
In the end, one gang member lay dead, bleeding onto the pavement. The other was wounded. And Mr. Sepi fled, “breaking contact” with the enemy, as he later described it. With his rifle raised, he crept home, loaded 180 rounds of ammunition into his car and drove until police lights flashed behind him.
“Who did I take fire from?” he asked urgently. Wearing his Army camouflage pants, the diminutive young man said he had been ambushed and then instinctively “engaged the targets.” He shook. He also cried.
How does a story like this not affect you, it certainly affects young Mr. Sepi in the most devastating way. And he's not an isolated case, the Times found at least 121 cases of veterans killing someone once they've returned home from battle. Many have been reported to be re-living combat experiences. Not surprisingly, the Pentagon and the Justice Department do not tally cases like this, and the VA has an ill-equipped system to deal with and treat these veterans. PTSD, while not curable is certainly treatable, unfortunately many slip through the cracks and end up in jail, not having the chance to learn how to re-integrate into society.
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