This is what happens when you drink the kool-aid, believe the lies that were made to start America down the path of endless warfare that only enriches the coffers of the military complex but sucks the life out of the people who put their lives on the line to operate it.
Robert Bales enlisted in the US military in response to 911, answering the call of patriotism to fight an enemy that was shadowy and elusive. That’s a good thing………the people who asked for his help, the politicians who made him and us feel good about that service knew it was predicated on a lie, and was designed to make sure that a way of life, not threatened, would be even more enhanced with his and countless others’ sacrifice. The Bush administration didn’t care one iota what the effect would be of countless tours it would ask its service men and women to go through; it never crossed the minds of the planners of one of the biggest bold faced lies America would embark on in some time. What mattered was the mission be accomplished.
Sgt. Bales served three tours in Iraq and a fourth in Afghanistan, the graveyard of Russia’s military. It was irrelevant to most in US policy circles that after Russia withdrew from Afghanistan it would undergo a radical political transformation…some would say because of its reckless foray into Afghanistan in just a few short months. America somehow thought its outcomes would be different and so Sgt. Bales was sent there on a 4th tour, injured and almost surely slightly insane. Now he has been charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder; nothing done in defense of his country or even of his fellow troops on the battlefield but something he initiated on his own in the dead of night at which time he murdered men, women and children in their homes while they slept.
The US military, stretched to its limits in theaters all over the world fighting people who are not a threat to the American way of life, but called that because a politician or special interests says they are, is reassigning soldiers who are crippled (Sgt. Bates supposedly had part of his foot amputated because of injuries he received in Iraq) or suffering from debilitating emotional paralysis due to things they’ve experienced, seen or done in Iraq and Afghanistan. These men and women simply are not getting the help they need to heal because the military has no time for their recuperation as it goes about the business of chasing ghosts. So Bales and countless others are recycled endlessly within the military until they crack, die, retire or are replaced by others. Bates cracked.
The American military is desperately in need of being treated for this disease of endless war
Since the start of the Iraq War in 2003, the rate of Suicide among U.S. Army soldiers has soared, according to a new study from the U.S. Army Public Health Command.
The study, an analysis of data from the Army Behavioral Health Integrated Data Environment, shows a striking 80 percent increase in suicides among Army personnel between 2004 and 2008. The rise parallels increasing rates of depression, anxiety and other mental health conditions in soldiers, the study said…..
“This study does not show that U.S. military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan cause suicide,” said Dr. Michelle Chervak, one of the study’s authors, a senior epidemiologist at the U.S. Army Public Health Command. “This study does suggest that an Army engaged in prolonged combat operations is a population under stress, and that mental health conditions and suicide can be expected to increase under these circumstances.”
In other words we can expect more Bates in the near future…and if that’s not distressing enough, remember these men and women return to the shores of our country with the war parasite embedded into their being and if we’re lucky enough not to have them act dishonorably, as Bates did, in Afghanistan or Iraq, that doesn’t spare us the possibility they might unleash their psychosis on us at home.
Sgt. Bales was doing what he was expected to do, not by the US military but by the people who sent him there. His job was to fill a slot and make it possible for US money to be funneled into it and into all the other slots occupied by American men and women who are manning military installations around the world. The people who started this war and used as a rallying cry that it’s a war with no physical or time boundaries are ultimately responsible for what happened the night Bates cracked and became homicidal. The truly tragic aspect to this all is, they’ve probably already replaced him with someone who is just as battered and bruised as he was. It’s just a matter of time before we will read about him or her.
Related articles
- Afghanistan is Hell, Time to Leave (papundits.wordpress.com)
- Hypnotized into an endless dirty war (salon.com)
- The Emptiness of Sgt. Bales (thedailybeast.com)
Miscellany101's Weblog 