Gee Whiz, Again

Let no guilty man escape
--U.S. Grant,
on the Whiskey Ring scandal of 1875,
in which he used the pardon to do just that

To conclude,
they are lying knaves
--Much Ado About Nothing, 
Shakespeare
_______________

[This is re-post of "Gee Whiz", orig. published 2 APR 2009. "Everything old is new again ..."]

The commonly-held assumption is that this war is at a final stage -- "Six years after the U.S. invaded Iraq, the end of America's costly mission is in sight" (Iraq Improved but Problems Remain). But the Vietnam war had another phase after the U.S. bowed out of the fight.

The same will be true in Iraq, so we oughtn't to pull a "gee whiz, who'd a thunk it" when it happens.

In the final stage of the war, America's challenge will be to prevent ethnic and sectarian competition from exploding into violence on the scale that plunged the nation to the brink of all-out civil war two years ago.

If the U.S. really wanted to prevent ethnic and sectarian violence, we would not have invaded six years ago. Saddam had that problem under control. Oh U.S., you are so disingenuous.

The concept that the U.S. will honor the existing non-congressionally approved Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) -- "U.S. combat troops are due to leave by September 2010, with all American soldiers gone by the end of the following year" -- is a dream at best; a lie, at worst.

The U.S. has no intention of disengaging. If we did our troops would be assing up and returning to their peacetime permanent stations. The troops remain on station because the Joint Chiefs want them to remain on station.

As Ranger's momma used to say: Mark my words!

Post Traumatic Society Disorder

--Net Warriors, Deng Coy Miel 

If you're in it for love, 
you ain't gonna get too far 
Watch out boy she'll chew you up
She's a maneater 
--Maneater, Hall and Oates

Temper filled with blindness
Leads this lost and lonely man
Dragged around your whipping tree
A scourge you can`t command 
--Another Bag of Bricks, Flogging Molly
 ________________

Ranger met a fellow Vietnam Army veteran last week and they discussed Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome (PTSD) and related topics. The Marine has stayed away from the diagnosis of PTSD, but it took him over a decade to begin processing his experience of profound anxiety, nightmares and the whole constellation of related symptoms; this got Ranger thinking.

We vets get labelled with the diagnosis of PTSD when in fact we are perfectly adapted to live and survive in an environment which requires hyper-vigilance, violent instantaneous reaction and all the other related behaviors of a predator in a prey environment.  The "problem" arises when we return to the civilian world, and our finely-honed responses are deemed inappropriate.

The situation is, we (I) do not consider PTSD to be our problem, but rather a problem for members of a too-lax society which does not know how to deal with self-contained and self-sustaining individuals like us.  "Okay", you say, "so, WTF?"

Well, aside from the fact that your government is producing more of us daily, we are -- in addition to our predator sensibilities -- resentful that we are held to a standard that our own government clearly does not adhere to.  After over a decade of involvement in a Phony War on Terror (PWOT ©), we as a nation have still not fessed up to the fact that our national reactions are no longer appropriate or applicable to leading functional lives; that in fact, they never were functional. 

The events of 9-11-01 were extremely short-lived: one day of madness.  The recovery should have been implemented immediately thereafter, except a disingenuous government pumped us full of fear and kept us in a heightened state of alert. Contrast this reaction with those of a soldier who must live a tour or more of tension, something that takes more than a moment from which to recover.

We tag our vets with PTSD, yet our National policy is as aberrant or non-adaptive as is the behavior of the most afflicted vets in our midst. We do not call our government "disordered", however.

When our society partakes of maladaptive behavior we call this "an action plan"; when vets do it we call it PTSD. Maybe a new meaning for the acronym could be, "Post-Traumatic Society Disorder."

[NOTE: There will be a follow-on called, "Good Soldiering".]

Gee Whiz

Let no guilty man escape
--U.S. Grant,
on the Whiskey Ring scandal of 1875,
in which he used the pardon to do just that

To conclude,
they are lying knaves
--Much Ado About Nothing, 
Shakespeare
_______________

The commonly-held assumption is that this war is at a final stage -- "Six years after the U.S. invaded Iraq, the end of America's costly mission is in sight" (Iraq Improved but Problems Remain). But the Vietnam war had another phase after the U.S. bowed out of the fight.

The same will be true in Iraq, so we oughtn't to pull a "gee whiz, who'd a thunk it" when it happens.

In the final stage of the war, America's challenge will be to prevent ethnic and sectarian competition from exploding into violence on the scale that plunged the nation to the brink of all-out civil war two years ago.

If the U.S. really wanted to prevent ethnic and sectarian violence, we would not have invaded six years ago. Saddam had that problem under control. Oh U.S., you are so disingenuous.

The concept that the U.S. will honor the existing non-congressionally approved Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) -- "U.S. combat troops are due to leave by September 2010, with all American soldiers gone by the end of the following year" -- is a dream at best; a lie, at worst.

The U.S. has no intention of disengaging. If we did our troops would be assing up and returning to their peacetime permanent stations. The troops remain on station because the Joint Chiefs want them to remain on station.

As Ranger's momma used to say: Mark my words!