Losing the peace -- of mind

By Libby

In a perverse way, the over 3,500 soldiers who have died in the occupation of the Iraq are the lucky ones. They at least are at peace and don't have to live with the traumatic memories of surviving their tours of duty. No matter how strong a person is, no one can witness horrible carnage and deliberately kill other human beings and remain unaffected. This is especially apparent in our returning Iraq occupation veterans.

According to the Pentagon's latest mental health survey, 31 percent of Marines, 38 percent of soldiers and 49 percent of the National Guard reported psychological symptoms such as anger, depression or alcohol abuse after returning home. As the director of the survey said, combat stress is not something you just get over.

Considering the macho mentality in the armed services and that the symptoms are self-reported, one can only surmise that these estimates are lowball figures.

This is a collateral cost that is rarely figured into the wonkish analysis on when we should end the Iraq occupation. Even the "good wars" left many veterans with permanent psychological damage. They used to call it “shell shock,” and then “combat fatigue.” Now we call it PTSD, but the malady is the same, if not worse, and it endangers us more than some nebulous terrorists plots.

These soldiers are trained to kill. Death is made palatable to the conscience by depersonalizing the enemy. They are taught it's good to kill "gooks" and "krauts" and now ragheads -- lessons that are reinforced by months and years of blowing their fellow man into tiny bits of bloody flesh. What they don't teach them is how to live with the memories once they get home. They don't reprogram them to live in peace, forcing the war vets to battle their internal demons on their own. And since it's viewed as some kind of admission of weakness, mental health is a low priority in the military -- especially in this administration.

The Army now has about 500 health professionals and plans to hire another 100. But there are about 1 million men and women who have served in Iraq or Afghanistan.

That's a helluva case load and leaves a whole lot of ticking time bombs walking among us. You often read about a returned Iraq vet who lost control and killed either themselves or their family during an PTSD episode. Every day that we remain in the occupation adds to their ranks.

(Thanks to Think Progress for the link.)