On Jun 4, 1:15 pm, Charlie Morgan wrote:
By all means, we should support the troops
JOHN HOURIHAN
Article Last Updated: 06/01/2007 10:16:58 PM EDT

Years ago, I was sitting in a morning meeting of journalists who were
"brainstorming" what we should put into a special section called "The
Vietnam War - 10 Years After."

They wanted to talk about the "ethics of war" and the "politics of the
troops," and I wanted to talk about Agent Orange and the lack of
support for returnees.

They wanted to talk about no parades. I wanted to talk about no health
care.

I made a few suggestions, but their glasses were so filled with
themselves I couldn't pour another ounce into them. It just spilled
out onto the boardroom table.

Finally, I shouted, "OK, how many of you have killed someone? Raise
your hands. I mean, you know, actually killed someone."

I raised my hand and looked around.

"No one but me? Then quiet down and listen. I have something to say."

And for the first time since then, I now want to ask again, "How many
of you who say you support the troops have killed someone for your
country?

OK, then I have something to say.

If you want to know what it means to "support the troops," you first
have to understand that war wouldn't be all that bad if people didn't
get killed, and that people die in a war for one reason: Because they
couldn't help it.

It is death that is the problem. It is the killing that makes it
difficult, that twists people's minds and sends them home "different."

And the recent multiple-tour idiocy that has become the pattern for
Iraq is wrong and dangerous. It has to be stopped. Our
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troops are seeing too much death, and they won't come home healthy.

Those who come back return with their minds figuratively strapped to a
white table in a brightly lit operating room in a mythical hospital,
and there they wait for the experts to come in and jolt them back into
sanity; but they aren't finding experts in the booth.

I spent three tours in a war - about three years. World War II was
different. They spent a longer time. But in Iraq, we keep sending the
same people back time and time again.

Let me tell you why it is so important to stop this practice.

The first six months go by relatively fast. A blur of the standard
operating procedure of war, getting used to climate changes,
biological changes and creating a cognitive map of the dangers of the
environment. At first you are taken care of by those who have been
there a while. But still people die.

If you live, you become one of those who does the "caring for." When
danger snaps in front of you, it is your own voice you hear first. It
is your eyes that find the evils, your hands that point to safety, and
still people die. War strips the invulnerability of youth from your
nerves like a knife scraping along a leather strop, and you realize
any minute can be your last - or worse, the last for those you care
about.

By the end of your tour, you have turned numb to everything but
staying alive. You are depressed that your friends have died, that you
couldn't save them. You stop sleeping and sometimes you lose weight.
You sweat cold in torrid heat and you shake cold when you are not. You
count first the months, then the weeks, then it comes down to counting
days, and hours before you get your orders home. But you feel every
second. Supporting the troops has nothing to do with keeping them in a
combat zone even an instant longer than they have to be there.

When you return, you are no longer young. Everyone notices that you've
changed. My sister, Nancy, who never minces words, said simply: "You
were insane. It took years to get you back."

One of the problems is that there is no happiness like the feeling of
stepping onto American soil after having spent a year or more in
combat, and there is no stronger feeling than the guilt you feel for
being happy when others are dead.

This is multiplied when you realize someone forgot to tell you that
you might feel guilty about killing other people.

When you return for your second tour, you bring this feeling with you.
And it grows.

And if you have three tours you have three times as many people to
feel guilty about. Whether you are feeling it for those you killed or
for those you couldn't keep from being killed, or just because you
survived and others didn't. And it is multiplied by itself every day
you are involved. It is amazing to me that so many soldiers return
whole.

So here's what I have to say.

By all means, support the troops. Bring them home.

Guess that's why Kerry is so ****ed up huh?

How about JFK, Regan, Washington,Churchill, Teddy Rosevelt, John
McCain, Roger Staubach, James Lovell, Wally Schirra ect.ect.ect...I
could go on forever.

It's likely in any group someone is going to become "insane" no
matter what.

Look at BB...he lost it a long time ago and did not even serve.

Every one in the military today joined of his or her own free will,
no one was drafted.

Joe