{"id":19111,"date":"2009-11-12T00:02:00","date_gmt":"2009-11-12T05:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=19111"},"modified":"2009-11-12T06:50:06","modified_gmt":"2009-11-12T11:50:06","slug":"us-veterans-ptsd-the-price-of-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/daily-astrology\/us-veterans-ptsd-the-price-of-war\/","title":{"rendered":"The Fringes are Burning"},"content":{"rendered":"

On the day President Obama spoke at the memorial service for the 13 soldiers who lost their lives in the tragic November 5th shooting at Fort Hood, Texas, a young Marine reservist mistakenly identified a visiting Greek Orthodox priest who barely spoke English as a Muslim terrorist,<\/strong><\/a> chased him down two blocks and beat him with a piece of iron rebar.<\/p>\n

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On the same day a Senate sub-committee met to take testimony on the continued and rising occurrence of homelessness among veterans where no Republicans came, veteran John Allen Muhammad\u00a0was executed by lethal injection, for the random killings committed 2002 in the DC beltway with the help of Lee Boyd Malvo .<\/p>\n

The original name for the holiday we currently call Veteran’s Day was Armistice Day — a multinational holiday commemorating the end of the international conflict called World War I. \u00a0Yet on this day in 2009, there is no peace to celebrate, either on the ground or in the hearts and minds of the soldiers we send to kill in the name of protecting our republic.\u00a0Our soldiers, particularly our Gulf War soldiers are finding it increasingly difficult to come to peace within themselves.<\/p>\n

In 2008, there were 143 suicides among Gulf War veterans. This is a 25% increase from the previous year, with 121 suicides. Conversely, over the last fifteen years, some of the worst acts of domestic violence were by Gulf War veterans.\u00a0Timothy McVeigh, a veteran of Gulf War I, assisted by fellow veteran Terry Nichols, exploded a truck filled with chemicals and fertilizer at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995, killing 168 people, including children in the site’s resident day-care center. John Allen Muhammad, the DC sniper was another Gulf War I veteran.<\/p>\n

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There is no doubt Army investigators, the FBI and all the powers of our government’s judicial arm are carefully weighing the evidence to come from the testimony of Nidal Malik Hasan, the alleged shooter at Fort Hood as well as I hope, his psychiatric tests.\u00a0There is also no doubt the anticipated finger-pointing, the “blame-and-name”, will fill our heads with the usual chatter: Why did the Army see him fit for duty in the first place? Who ignored the signs of his instability and his history and thought it insignificant enough to ignore? What mosque did he attend? Did his imam justify jihad against Americans?<\/p>\n

I am distrustful of quick conclusions drawn up in the heat of the media glare and an all-too-convenient excuse of one’s religion and cultural background as the set-up. We are very attracted to and seem to need a convenient excuse. And given the current political climate and the impending decision on what to do in Afghanistan and Pakistan, convenience is the last thing we need.<\/p>\n

Our soldiers stand at the far-flung borders of the nation and its interests, volunteering to hold watch. Unending conflict, military tours of duty that continue and re-continue, a war with little rationale that was never justifiable to begin with–these factors have lit a long slow destructive fire. Bodies and minds sacrificed on the bonfire for this war bring the flames drifting inward. And now the fringes are burning hot, as Eric said on November 5th: “The War has come home.”<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

I have said before in comments on this subject elsewhere on the Planet Waves blog, popular culture and our conventional wisdom even some of my own peers seem to be trapped in simple conclusions about the Fort Hood shootings:<\/p>\n

“A lone shooter.”<\/p>\n

“One crazy guy.”<\/p>\n

“There are lots of them out there doing the same thing from time to time. It happens.”<\/p>\n

We have gone down this path before, and really haven’t stopped. Not since the mid 19th century with wars that come along every generation or so, creating misery in their wake, destroying lives long after the shooting stops. Can we break out of the cycle that keeps us mired in the conventional wisdom that continues war?<\/p>\n

Tonight, I hold this day of Armistice with a candle at the window. A light lit with a prayer to break ourselves of the habit of war. We need something better to re-fill our hearts and minds. We need to occupy our bodies with re-building what was lost. We need something brighter in our imagination of the future than a coin of remembrance for lives that might have been.<\/p>\n

Yours and truly,<\/p>\n

Fe Bongolan<\/strong>
\nSan Francisco<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On the day President Obama spoke at the memorial service for the 13 soldiers who lost their lives in the tragic November 5th shooting at Fort Hood, Texas, a young Marine reservist mistakenly identified a visiting Greek Orthodox priest who barely spoke English as a Muslim terrorist, chased him down two blocks and beat him … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1592,1788,52,1054,1593,1594],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19111"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19111"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19111\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}