What are We Subjecting Our Young Men and Women To?
Yesterday I was talking with a friend about the different side effects and post-war symptoms that our men and women in the service come home with, and it got me thinking. You see, not too long ago, my father fell at work and had a catstrophic accident that flung my entire family into a dark abyss. We are still recovering from this accident nearly three years later—my father with health and mental issues and the rest of us with emotional ones. And this was a freak accident, not something that happens every day.
Yet our brave men and women in the service are facing just that—freak accidents and sights and physical challenges that ARE everyday occurrences. What they see and what they experience translates into horrors and injuries that we normally would not witness, and our bodies are not prepared to cope with these things alone. Many of these people seek help, but many don’t, as well; in fact, I had a cousin who served in Vietnam who was never the same. A handsome, fit man once, the last time I saw him he was three times the size he’d been before serving, but worse, he was an emotional wreck—crying all of the time, needing a place to live, and who knows what else? He stayed with us for a while when we were kids, but I have unfortunately not seen him since. I don’t think anyone else has, either.
Just what are we subjecting these people to? Many of us like to use the talking point that we are sending our beloved family members and young people over to die, when in fact we are still sentencing them to something akin to death even if they make it back home. With physical and emotional trauma, injuries, amputations, PTSD, and who knows what else these service people are going through, is the risk at ruining their entire lives—and putting them through a lifetime of recovery each—really worth whatever the hell we’re trying to accomplish?
Let’s bring them home, and let’s do it today. Right now. Let’s vow to never instigate violence again, and to only retaliate when absolutely necessary—which we’ve already established this war was not—to prevent our families from enduring these horrors. And how about we stop threatening to cut all of their benefits while we’re at it? They deserve better than this. They deserve better from us.