On Wounded Warriors and War Based on Deception

A heartfelt plea:

For every wounded American soldier from the post-9/11 wars, how many wounded soldiers and civilians, men, women, children, are in Iraq? How many in Afghanistan?

The United States is a large nation with over three hundred million people, and has had a few thousand soldiers killed and some tens of thousands wounded. Iraq and Afghanistan, with much smaller populations, have suffered hundreds of thousands dead and millions wounded: many of them civilians, and many of them children.

Not to diminish the suffering of the Americans who have been hurt by the wars, but the peoples that they killed and wounded over there are suffering a far greater loss.

They did not come to the United States to attack Americans. Americans went to their countries, on false pretenses, and full of blood lust, to attack them. It was a slaughter from the beginning.

It is tragic that anyone, no matter what nationality, religion, ideology, or skin color- for all of those things figured into these wars- died or has been wounded.

But each of us, as the saying goes, gets to make his own movie; that is, we have choices.

Not one American soldier went to Iraq or Afghanistan without making a choice to do so, or a prior choice which directly led to war eventually.

But none of the men, women, children, (and let us not forget the many domestic animals and livestock wantonly killed by Americans) made the choice to have Americans come from thousands of miles away in order to kill and wound them, and for no good reason.

So they fought back, and some Americans have been hurt and some have been killed, although the average American does not think about it very much, since our population is so large compared to the number of dead and wounded.

That is too bad. They went looking for trouble and found it. It was none of my doing, and my efforts to prevent it were almost meaningless in the rush to war. So I couldn't prevent it. All I could do was not support it, and protest it.

This process happens in every war.

Soldiers go off to war, and the peaceful people say "Please do not go to war". But they go anyway.

Then they come back. Some never heal up, some seem to become more or less normal. Some don't come back at all.

Many of them have on their conscience the memories of horrible things, of brutality beyond measure, of cruelty, of loathsome visions: things that haunt.

So they are given drugs which as long as the level is just right generally help to stave off the inner demons.

But if the drugs are off balance -which is typical, and to be expected, at least part of the time- suicidal ideation and all sorts of other frightening and horrible thoughts and feelings of impending doom come flooding back.

Many also use alcohol. The combination of the PTSD drugs with alcohol makes the likelihood of suicide or of violence against others a much greater possibility. The probabilities of more severe disability, or of alcohol-related death or madness, all increase dramatically.

So they are given benzodiazepines, to keep them docile and to help them not worry about anything. But then one day the Xanax or the Klonopin is cut off, and they go crazy, and become suicidal, or perhaps have convulsions or events like epileptic seizures, in the midst of terrible fears of impending doom and a cornered-animal need to escape- just escape somehow, anyhow.

At this point some choose death, by suicide, by guns, drugs, police, auto wreck, hanging, and other methods, because they are not in their right minds and can't afford to be in their right minds, because then the memories are too clear and they can't bear living with all the guilt and the hauntings of the men and women and children they hurt and killed and raped and burned. Karma is a bitch.

It breaks my heart, but I at least do not have a mind and body broken by war. So I both pity them and also want to tell them, this is what happens when you hurt your fellow man, it comes back to you.

A big responsibility for all of this lies with the older people, those in charge of making war decisions, who sent the soldiers into these wars, on false pretenses, in the most cynical way imaginable- for profit, for racism, for religious bias, and for the joy of the hunt.

That's right. that is a big part of it. It was man-hunting time, and it was a big romantic attraction. Women swooned. Katie Couric gushed that "SEALS rock!". There were many similar examples.

Men gave homage. Americans had flags on their cars. And remember the flag pins?

It was the joy of a blood feast, and it was horrible to see this country do it, and made me feel, ever since, that I am not really a part of this society anymore. I've lived here for two thirds of a century now, so that is hard to deal with.

But my little pains over that are nothing like the pains of war. I've been tone of the lucky ones. I almost went to Vietnam. But I got good advice, and didn't go. I was lucky. Most young men got bad advice, and many went and they are still with us and many are still wounded inside and out.

So it is with every war. These post-9/11 wars are certainly among the most heinous of any in my lifetime because of being based on lies piled upon lies- and to this day they are being based upon more lies based upon the previous lies.

And the men and women who made it happen are walking around free, because of the collective guilt in the American population now.

They are waling around free, too, because of the failure of the Justice Department to prosecute the true perpetrators of September 11, who are known.

That is, I find it impossible to believe that the CIA, the FBI, and the Attorney General does not know who actually pulled off September 11.

If a bozo like myself can figure out half of it, they can figure out all of it.

So it is a continuing criminal fraud that is laced all through government, military, and corporate entities.

I would call it the elephant in the living room, but that metaphor is woefully insufficient. This is much, much bigger and more dangerous than a mere elephant in the living room.

That collective guilt also prevents Americans from being willing to look at the 9/11 evidence which has accumulated. One of these days this whole hallucination is going to snap and people will finally get it in a lump.

As it is now, even with all the horrors already caused by the wars, it is just a trickle, as one by one Americans come to terms with the dirty realities of the wars that most of them cheered.

In time, one by one Americans will also become familiar with the realities of the events that enabled the wars to start; that is, the true story of September 11, including the whole part about someone wiring those buildings for explosives and then using it as an excuse to go kill a million people in a foreign land, and rape their women and girl children, and burn people alive, and kill prisoners, and torture.

Meanwhile, many Americans made huge profits, still being accumulated every day, from mass murder and war crimes.

Yes, it could be said that the American soldiers have gotten off pretty lightly all in all.

But they will have to live with themselves, or die.

I'm sorry to go off on such a rant about these subjects. But really, what is my little rant compared to even one death or one wound?

If only people had listened to those who tried to stop the rush to war! But the nation had gone mad and was in the grips of a gigantic mass delusion- and still is.

First published at http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/11/07-5