There are two articles below this one. One is about the violence perpetrated by rogue veterans after serving in Iraq and Afganistan. One is a strong reaction agains that kind of reporting. Both are valid arguments.
Is it responsible journalism to sensationalize the few killers who have returned from battle in foreign lands, only to unleash that fury on Americans?
Is it responsible journalism to highlight the plight of PTSD affected veterans who have returned from war only to find that they can't fit back into society, and find it easier to revert to their skill, stealth killing, as a solution to the new stress?
Is it responsible to rant about how that makes these people lepers and it just isn't fair to defame these valiant heroes?
I am on the fence. I am on the fence after living, breathing and co-existing with a veteran. I am on the fence about telling people honestly what anger can do. I am on the fence of personal privacy, which keeps me from saying yes, they sure are armed, wouldn't you be if you if your gun meant your life...
Not everyone comes back and shifts right in. On the contrary, going to Iraq fresh out of high school, a young adult has little coping strategies for making it in society. Also, upon return the young person sees friends that are more established and it is frustrating. Especially if he or she is still taking a knee at the boom of the fourth of July show, or when a car backfires. You start to feel like a freak, a freak who has lost time. A freak that has valuable skill on a battle field and no commensurate skill or task in society.
It seems easier to just go back.
Not only might these folks lack everyday coping strategies and decision making skills, but they have all new burdens. A combat vet can have exposure to spent uranium, traumatic brain injury, digestion problems, and PTSD. A combat vet can have fewer limbs, constant pain, and the possibility of never returning to what was known before deployment. How many deaths, howmany friends lost, how many images are stuck in that man or woman's head? It just isn't easy or pretty for many returning home.
"Two years of shells and bombs, a man's not
likely to peel that off like a sock" from All Quiet on the Western Front
Not all veterans are the same. My friends in blue seem to have limitless support to help them with any and all prolbems. My friends in green, the ones with the pretty blue braid or the ones with the medic patch, they aren't the same.
If they aren't the same, we can't generalize. What we can do as a society is provide real loving support, real medical support, real lifetime support. It means more than waving a flag on that one day, or visiting that one memorial that one time. It means work, and when it really comes down to it, most folks would rather pop open a drink and zone out to the boob tube.
We really shouldn't fear the unknown veteran, we should fear the unknown consequences of knowingly turning our back on our own creations.
When you get past all the blue state red state, gun ownership, self-righteousness, what we lack is a logical connection between our actions, our politics and the outcomes in society. We seem to get far enough to question authority, but we don't question who benefits from the lobbyists and the business behind the authority.
Who really benefits from this war, would they benefit from recognizing a problem with the combat veterans, their quality of life or what we really owe them in society? Would they?
6 comments:
These are meaty questions.
Let me say, first of all, that as in previous American wars, veterans are returning to a society that "just doesn't get it." For the medic, who at age 20 was saving lives, to the pilot who was responsible for dropping explosives on Afghan villages, to the cleric who diligently tried to keep that one desperate soldier from killing himself, all return to the States with the jarring sense that no one understands them. It's not imagined - truly we don't.
Yet, we expect them to return to their routine lives without a glitch. The young veteran who returns to college after having killed 10 insurgents, finds that his friends only have partying on their minds. It's a mindset that he/she can no longer relate to.
WE are responsible for it all. Society is responsible for sending these men and women into the ravages of war, and we are responsible for what it does to their minds. We are just beginning to pay the consequences of what we have asked of them, but we must be prepared to do so. Society, at large, is the problem -- not these men and women who are merely reacting normally to extremely abnormal circumstances.
As far as journalism and the reporting, I too am torn. Do we respect the privacy of these turmoil-ridden veterans and their families, or do we try to educate the spoiled public, even if it means beating them over the head with the heavy brick of reality?
I just don't know.
With the major media in the US owned by well connected entertainment companies, and the new laws which allow newspapers to be owned by the same darn companies, there is a slow death to real journalism. Yellow journalism is almost the only journalism on TV.
Also, being know more about which diva didn't wear underwear or which diva's life is falling apart than they do about war and the effects of war. If it were covered in journalism as much as Paris Hiltons crotch is uncovered in journalism, everyone would have new pathos.
It doesn't just effect the veteran, it is the family, mom, dad, siblings, girlfriends or wives and children, boyfriends, husbands, what have you.
The whole of which needs to be addressed publically, tactfully, and personally.
I meant... now we know more, not being know more..
I received emails about this, but not sure if I have permission to publish. I am going to post another entry from the NY Times about prosecution. It's a related twist.
FYI-
http://www.sheehanmiles.com/blogid/3004
not in frame of mind (too tired) to write a response right now, just thought i'd include this.
:)
Sapphire:
... and we are responsible for what it does to their minds.
I am not sure I agree with this....we as a society?
That's a lot.
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