I must admit, being paid to walk around with a big gun, driving rather unique and powerful vehicles does sound like a fun until you realize that your main purpose is to be an efficient killing machine.
Documentary Summary
You should watch this video but here is a summary if you don’t have time.
- war doesn’t only cause physical scars but also mental ones that remain with soldiers for a lifetime, hidden from sight
- solders, when they first entered Iraq, needed verification from their buddies that what they where seeing wasn’t just in their imagination, from destroyed vehicles to dead bodies laying along the road
- reports of suicide bombers where rampant as soldiers first entered Bagdad so they where very fearful as everybody looked like a potential enemy
- solders opened up fire with over 15 weapons against a woman in a black burka that didn’t obey their commands, slowly approaching them only to discover she was trying to pull out a white flag to show the soldiers
- soldier who initiated the first shots decided to hide this experience from others but it began to have a mental toll on him
- there is no protection during war for the mind as you are constantly witnessing death by the hands of others and yourself
- once soldiers return from the battlefield, they begin to regain their emotions and realizing, replaying, the tragedy that they had witnessed
- returning veterans have frequent troubling dreams, feelings and thoughts
- nobody comes back from combat unchanged
- depression, anger and emotional turmoil take their toll and the army re-enforces these thoughts by telling them that their lives are already over and not to worry about their mortality as it don’t make things better
- on any given day, there are more psychological casualties then physical ones during war
- psychological trauma was referred to as shell-shocked in WW1 and battle fatigue in WW2
- 1/3 of returning Vietnam vets suffered from psychological problems upon returning, referred to as post-Vietnam Syndrome
- after Vietnam, the medical community called this problem Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
- military focuses too much on physical abilities at the cost of being able to mentally handle the ramifications of an action
- solders are not suppose to show any weakness
- there is a huge stigma towards receiving psychological help, it’s even career ending for soldiers
- Iraq was the first time that psychologists where introduced onto the battlefield to help soldiers cope with what they where experiencing, referred to as Combat Stress Control Teams by the Pentagon
- after a soldier asked for help from the Combat Stress Control Teams, they where mentally abused by the command structure and later discharged for cowardice
- military heavily frowns upon soldiers who refuse to fight or fear dying
- Veterans Affairs is not part of the military and any information given to them is strictly confidential
- resilience treatments are being performed by the military in order to help soldiers cope with their mental problems, ironically, once they are “cured”, they are sent right back into the environment that caused the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
- few studies have been made on sending somebody with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder back into a battlefield, military states that combat is their job, regardless of the impact on the mental or physical costs
- purpose of the military is to win wars, people with mental or physical problems are of no use to them
- in January 2005, the Department of Defense slowly began to take steps towards dealing with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in it’s ranks
The Bottom Line
War is the ultimate failure for both diplomats and the soldiers tasked with fighting them.
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