I have been hearing a lot of things about the troops in Iraq. I hear they are raping little girls, killing innocent people and doing other unscrupulous things. I hear this, and I get reminded of stories I have heard from Vietnam vets. Things like this occurred in Iraq. I was told by one of my teachers, who did not participate in any of the horrors that he witnesses, that when he was in Vietnam, no one wanted to be there, and he could see some of the soldiers going crazy. He told me how he had become friends with people he had trained with, and they all went to Vietnam together. They were all seemingly normal, but my teacher said that the war began to have a bad effect on all of them. Some in more horrible ways then others. He said for him, he stopped sleeping completely, and began to have hallucination. He said some men, or should I say boys, contemplated wounding themselves so they could go home. Some begin to talk to people that was not there, some were friends who were killed. This was some of the more "normal" behavior my teacher witnessed. He said the worse was when they would raid villages and kill innocent people. I asked him why they would do it. He said they were told to do it. He said he witnessed the rape of children that haunted him forever. He said when he met these men they were normal, sane people, but it was like fearing for your life and being someone you didn’t want to, did something bad to people. It drove them crazy. I asked him about the Oliver Stone film, Platoon. He said it was quite accurate to some of the things he saw. He is not the only person to have told me some of the horrible things that happened it Vietnam. But now that I am hearing similar stories about Iraq, I am beginning to wonder. Are the troops going through the same thing the troops went through in Vietnam? Is Iraq becoming our generation’s Vietnam? I hear stories of troops wanting to come home, but not being able to. What if their atrocities are their way of finding a way to come home? They feel that is the only way? What if my teacher was right about war; that the fear of dying mixed with being somewhere you don’t want to be, can drive you crazy?
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Going off to war is very stressful I would imagine. The stress the soldiers feel could cause them to react to things differently than they would normally. Soldiers are asked to do things that we are all taught are wrong like killing another person and torturing prisoners. Bullets and bombs are going off all around. Another thing I think would be a major factor in this situation is being away from your family for long periods of time. How can one stay sane in a situation like this?
I have a class with a guy who just got back from being in Iraq for 2 years. He said that although many things are just miscontrued images and details that the media feeds us, there is a certain insanity that overcomes people after a while. He said men, specifically, would get these bursts of testosterone and just get outraged and stuff. However, he did say that just random killing of innocent civilians is very rare. I wrote a blog about some of his stories. You should check it out.
Although i know that most soldiers are decent people, i could see how sometimes the horrors of war would get to you after a while. I mean i guess if you were there you would have to totally disconnect yourself from everything or else you wouldn't be able to do your job properly, and i think sometimes that people just take that too far and they don't think about what they're doing sometimes...but i don't know i've never been in such a stressful situation. I would imagine that i would want to withdrawl back to a simpler time (the reason some people talk to people who aren't there) and since our minds are so fragile as it is, if you tell yourself enough times, you could come to believe that that is exactly where you are....not where you REALLY are you know? But i just couldn't imagine going through what our troops are going through. God Bless them.
Over N Out
Tiny