Obama Administration Should Try Counting The Cost Now Of PTSD In Later Years
By ROBERT WELLER
Apparently being around for more than 2,000 years isn't enough for some people to believe that Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is real.
Sophocles wrote a play about the anguish suffered by Greek soldiers in the Trojan War.
Still, some blogs remain full of toxic accusations that soldiers, and others, claiming they are victims of PTSD are just lame-ass malingerers. They somehow liken it to a Hollywood Rambo thing.
Personally, I don't recall ever seeing Sylvester freak out in mid-battle.
If anything Hollywood has caught on. In the film “Defiance” Daniel Craig, better known as the latest James Bond, is knocked for a loop by a German shell. His brother has to take over leading the Jews hiding in the forest because Craig can't function.
My gut tells me, and this is based on no factual information at all, that these are the same Rush Limbaugh fans who want Obama to fail.
Given that Allied forces formally recognized PTSD, calling it things like exhaustion and shell-shock, in World War I, it should have been no surprise that Iraq and Afghanistan would be sending thousands home who were stressed out they were dysfunctional. The suicide rate rose dramatically.
For those who think the French are wimps _ forgetting that without their navy's intervention in the Revolutionary War we would still be speaking English _ they executed soldiers believed to have wounded themselves to get sent home. Sometimes they were tossed into no-man's land. On other occasions soldiers were picked at random and shot because impossible offensives had failed.
Commanders admit they didn't immediately recognize the depth of the problem in Iraq. Some say it has become so devastatingly high because of the widespread use of IEDs.
It was around in World War II, Gen. George S. Patton probably was suffering it when he got into trouble for slapping two soldiers.
Autopsies have revealed that some PTSD victims also had brain damage. New brain spect scanners are finding it fairly often in solders who appear to have suffered a psychiatric injury.
It is an injury; it is not disease. Why shouldn't someone who watched friends killed, but escaped without a scratch, not qualify for a Purple Heart. Someone who steps on a nail can get one.
An Army report last year said never in the history of this nation's armed forces have soldiers been on the front lines as long as those in Iraq. My late mother insisted my father was on the front lines for three years. In fact, units were rotated.
After the Surgeon General found that soldiers on front lines for more than three months were virtually useless, the Army began rotating entire units to rear areas for months at a time.
Without a draft we can't do that in Iraq or Afghanistan.
There are several questions I'd love to see answered. Many predicted that the widespread playing of video games by teens would lead to more violence. It may have been a factor in Columbine. My heart tells me it must.
But if it does, why do today's young soldiers seem less capable of dealing with the haunting memories of killing people or losing a comrade? And have playing video games been proven helpful to recovering PTSD victims.
“The Face of Battle,” a military history by Sir John Keegan, published in 1976, suggests that as humankind evolves they become less capable of fighting. I hope he is right, though it may put us at a disadvantage in conflicts with less-developed countries. That seems to be where we are right now.
Our military planners are already working on outsourcing as much of the killing as possible to satellite-guided drones.
Seeking some meaning, and knowing the history of Vincent Van Gogh I looked at things he had said:
“I put my heart and my soul into my work, and have lost my mind in the process.” That certainly would apply to our soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen, who have continued to fight with all their might even after the reason for the war has almost been forgotten.
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