09 November 2005
They Are Killing My Brothers Again
¶ 3:07 PM 
They Are Killing My Brothers Again
Recommended related reading: Redliners, an SF novel of traumatic stress and redemption.
. | My own Viet Nam service from 1969 to 1970 was non-combatant, but i watched how that war developed, how it ended, and how its veterans {or victims, to look at it another way} were (are) treated, and how they have fared. For some time, the suicide rate among Viet Nam veterans was (and may still be, for all i know) much higher than among others of the same ages and socio-economic groups. |
| I recently read a news story on AP about a rash of suicides among the members of a Special Forces unit after their return from Iraq, and it inspired the following diatribe: |
| They are killing my brothers again. In the Sixties, they sent us off to Viet Nam so that Robert Macnamara could prove the US had a bigger dick than the Soviet Union. They sent us off to Viet Nam because they knew how to start a war but not how to win or end one. They sent us off to Viet Nam because LBJ, RMN and Kissinger couldn't admit that their policies were wrong. And we fought and we died and we came home and we died by our own hand at home because they just dumped us back into civilian life and we couldn't handle the memories or the stresses and no one much was able (or willing) to acknowledge our need for help. And they are killing my brothers again. Sending them off to die to hide the fact that George W. Bush and his Administration haven't the slightest idea how to actually deal with terrorism, so they are wagging the dog in Iraq. Sending them off to die, infused -- brainwashed -- with a macho culture that says it's "unmanly" to admit that you are hurting and need help. A culture that files court-martial charges of cowardice against a soldier who seeks psychiatric help for his anxieties and fears. Sending them off to die to hide the fact that the Bush Administration is riding a tiger -- lying to start the war, but with no idea how to actually end it. Sending them off to die so that George W. Bush can feel as if he actually has a penis and balls. They are killing my brothers again with lies and incompetence and indifference and cynicism and profiteering, just as they have in every war that's ever been fought. And the Universal Soldier marches on. Eric Bogle's heart-breaking song, "No Man's Land", a meditation over the grave of a nineteen- year-old British soldier who died in France in 1916, ends And I can't help but wonder now Willie McBride Do all those who lie here know why they died? Did you really believe them when they told you the cause? Did you really believe that this war would end war? But the suffering, the sorrow, the glory, the shame - The killing and dying - it was all done in vain. For Willie McBride, it's all happened again And again, and again, and again, and again. And again and again and again. [lyric © copyright by eric bogle] |
| And they are killing my brothers again. |
