| Subject: Iraq-Who will pay the price? |
Author:
Betty
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Date Posted: 15:26:45 02/01/04 Sun
In reply to:
Betty
's message, "Peace" on 09:07:59 03/23/03 Sun
Who will pay the price for Iraq?
By Don Monkerud
High suicide rates among soldiers in Iraq should come as no surprise. Anyone who remembers America’s last colonial-style war or who walks the nation’s streets knows how Vietnam vets continue to suffer long after the last shot was fired.
More than 58,000 soldiers, not to mention 3 million Vietnamese, lost their lives in Vietnam and 700,000 suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. Unfortunately, the toll didn’t end when the United States scrambled out of Vietnam.
Reports estimate that between 60,000 and 150,000 died since the war due to suicide, drug overdose, alcoholism and homelessness. Others continue to have nightmares 30 years after their service. They did things they will never live down and committed acts which continue to plague them.
Couple fear created by being "a sitting duck" with a young man’s proclivity toward violence and a military system that demands total obedience, and wartime atrocities are no surprise. It’s easy to see why Vietnam vets had a problem with conforming to civilian life after the war. In addition to the accidents, physical exhaustion and lapses in judgment created by occupying a country that was fighting a war of independence, our soldiers were forced to obey military commands that violated their consciences, international law and American values.
Presidential aspirant John Kerry admits to brutal massacres in Vietnam. Or take Operation Phoenix, being resurrected today in Iraq, which carried out the assassination of 41,000 Vietnamese suspected of collaborating with the Viet Cong between 1968 and 1972. Vietnamese unlucky enough to be caught in "free-fire zones" were shot indiscriminately and their ears were cut off and hung around soldiers’ necks as grisly war trophies. Villages were burned, civilians "relocated," and large swaths of the country were defoliated.
Victors never face "war crimes," and not every soldier committed such acts, yet the actions of the U.S. military in Vietnam continue to be a dark stain on America’s conscience.
Can today’s occupying army look forward to nightmares similar to those of Vietnam vets? The demoralization of soldiers is inevitable when a powerful, technologically advanced nation occupies a small poverty-stricken nation that resents the occupation. Indeed, our soldiers are already suffering.
Washington reports that the suicide rate among our soldiers in Iraq is 25 to 30 percent higher than the rate of the civilian population, and some contend that the rate is much higher. With 500 dead and 10,000 casualties "medically evacuated" from Iraq, many of our soldiers may be depressed by the deaths of their friends and thoughts of their own deaths. But that’s not the whole story.
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According to Vietnam vets, guilt plays an important role in PTSD that leads to serious personal problems. A careful reading of reports from Iraq provides ample evidence of the root causes of these problems. Soldiers are being commanded to carry out acts that they will later regret, or they watch others commit horrible acts they are powerless to prevent.
Read, for example, the accounts in Rolling Stone magazine from a reporter embedded with soldiers during the first wave of the Iraq invasion. Innumerable incidents of soldiers killing innocent civilians litter these pages. A carload of people who don’t understand English is ordered to stop and then shot. A young girl’s head blown away, the mother and father covered in blood. Other Iraqi civilians are shot down in cruel sport. Or consider civilian protest against the occupation. On innumerable occasions, soldiers have shot into crowds, killing and wounding civilians indiscriminately. Or consider the missiles that "accidentally" went off course or the bombs that "missed" their targets and killed civilians. How many among us could live with such atrocities?
Defending your country is one thing, but invading another country halfway around the world for dubious reasons is another. Although the United States abandoned a conscript army for one of paid professionals, our soldiers are not merely mercenaries, doing work for hire. They are American citizens, fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, and they should not be asked to perform actions that both they and we will regret later.
They signed up to defend our country and now find themselves carrying out a highly questionable occupation foisted on the American public by political leaders’ personal agendas. Did we really think we could invade Iraq for free? Who pays the price?
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