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The Pentagon - Source: Reuters -
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If you're fortunate enough one day to fly out of Washington Reagan National Airport (okay, not high on the list of life's lucky moments, I'll agree, but bear with me), and you're heading South; it pays to look outside the left of plane. You should pass over the Pentagon, the home of the most powerful war machine on the globe...
It's also a place, by the way, that if you're on the ground around it, you can't shoot... video for love nor money. Trying to do so without permission is the surest way to get yourself banged up by the law, short of walking down Pennsylvania Avenue naked, and screaming about the Jewish Conspiracy.
I digress. Just opposite the Pentagon is the Air Force memorial, an oddly beautiful double parenthesis in steel, and behind that lies Arlington National Cemetary, the final resting place of many soldiers who have fought and perished in America's foreign wars. Fans of spy movies will be familiar with the verdant deep grass, and the kilometers of white gravestones, all of a requisite size and shape; conveying the message that though those who lie beneath that expensively tended green were different in life, in death as American fighters, they assume a single, and massed form. Most Americans will tell you that form is 'The Price of Freedom'.
Arlington holds the remains of about 300,000 souls, including veterans who fought in the Revolutionary Wars, World War Two, Operation 'Just Cause' in Panama, Americans who died in the first Gulf War, and those who were killed in operations in Beirut and Grenada. It's also where John F. Kennedy lies, and is the final repose for Dashiell Hammett, the novelist who wrote the detective books The Maltese Falcon, and The Thin Man; Hammett fought in both World Wars last century, and was blacklisted during the McCarthyite anti-communist witch-hunts of the 1950s.
Seeing this -for many Americans- sacred site from the air, you are given a sense both of the dimensions of their sacrifice, and how closely it is held to be a part of the makeup of what was believed through much of last century to be an American. Arlington also measures in how high a regard that the military is held to this day in the United States; a regard that arguments over the morality of American involvements abroad are filtered though; some would say deliberately distorted by.
Which is why Americans were startled to hear of an American soldier today who shot five fellow GIs , and wounded three others in Camp Liberty inside the Green Zone in Baghdad. Americas are trying to forget they are still in Iraq; here was a reminder that they still are, and that the penalty is not always to be paid in combat deaths.
Notably, the soldier, whose name at present hasn't been released, was in a stress clinic; a place where soldiers could seek help for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD, a psychological illness that comes from being exposed for too long to the stresses of war.
The Iraq and Afghan wars are significant in that the psychologically wounded far outnumbers those Americans killed, or wounded. A study completed last year suggests that 20% of those who served suffer from either PTSD, or major depression. This amounts to 300,000 people; a total matching those who lie, at peace one hopes, in Arlington National.
The number of American dead in both theatres is almost 5000. Just over 30,000 Americans have been wounded so far in Iraq, with just under 2800 wounded in Afghanistan.
Iraquis, who have by some estimates lost around a million civilians, may be unsympathetic to this accounting.
The stress clinic tragedy escapes the bounds of easy irony, in that it suggests a problem with Obama's strategy to exit Iraq, and focus on Afghanistan. The presumption is that Iraq now is relatively docile. This has not been borne out by recent American casualty numbers. The American withdrawal is hoped to begin in two months time, and will no doubt be heralded by the new administration as a sign that electoral promises can be kept. But as troops leave, those who remain, many of them having served many tours of duty, will be placed under greater duress. Even if they return with their lives, their lives will never be the same. The Defence Department, ie the unfilmable Pentagon, has ramped up its attempts to deal with PTSD, and depression, but many soldiers, perhaps almost 50% don't feel right about owning up to these conditions; it's just not soldierly.
Today's events in Camp Liberty in Baghdad suggest that even if Obama achieves his goal of a speedy, and cleanish withdrawal from Iraq, the casualties of both wars will not just be contained in the green ground of Arlington National.
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Add a Comment:
Post new commentNewzgal said on 2010-01-03 @ 15:46 NZDT: Report abusive post
Hi Tim, great blog. I agree right wingers have a Hobbesian view of existence, and like many I welcomed Obama’s presidency. However I always watched Fox News just to see how they were framing up the news (which far too many people rely on). I now find it more useful than ever to tune into the right just incase there is a kernel of truth in their rants as it seems the media and world have been far too soft on the new president and democrats, perfect recipe to slip things in!
jackdoitcrawford said on 2009-09-11 @ 23:24 NZDT: Report abusive post
Please don't label all people you disagree with, and put them in the same camp. Ayn Rand was pro abortion, achievement, reason, freedom, capitalism and happiness. She was definitely neither a conservative nor a libertarian. She also didn't want to live under a dictatorship. I see nothing wrong with this at all.
Kiwi in USA said on 2009-09-11 @ 17:58 NZDT: Report abusive post
I would have to disagree with Tim saying Bill ORielly is a right wing loon as if it were. He is defintly a independet and he always tells his viewers that. I know that there is plenty of loons like rush but come on, Obama is really turning America in the wrong direction. He has spent more money than all the presidents have combined. America is in trillions of dollars worth of debt.