Casualties At Home

Army Pfc. Joseph Dwyer is just one of several thousand who have already died, or will die a slow painful death long after serving their county, after sacrificing their personality and home life as they and their families knew it, for a country that will have abandoned them when they needed help the most. There are two kinds of suicide, the quick and decisive kind, and the mental death limbo variety that many soldiers, drug addicts, and others who have suffered from severe trauma that has been left untreated, barely live in. Sometimes they suffer for years only to eventually physically perish in a constant search for a break from their shot nerves, tattered mind, and the vivid images it retains. Their families are ill-equipped to deal with the person that some of these men and women become while fighting an unending war without any clear objective, other than their immediate concern to protect their brothers and sisters in combat. For many soldiers, if they lose a squad member or a part of a major combat operation that results in a civilian death, there is no comfort, as keeping their mates and innocents alive becomes the only objective. There is nothing to hang their guilt, remorse, or just general unsorted feelings on when they get back home, away from their military family, with their civilian families who understandably simply can't understand what they're feeling or going through. These types of deaths are the result, and unfortunately, sometimes they take others down with them in their inadequately treated pain, paranoia, and delusions.

You can't send women and men to war without out the proper armor, there has to be a clear, competent military objective, and you have an obligation to treat them when they get back. These are three basic necessities to care for the overall well-being for any soldier who has been asked to serve in combat, but since they don't work for their private army, I suppose the Bush administration just doesn't give a damn.
(Via Turley)

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