http://articles.latimes.com/2012/apr/25/nation/la-na-army-ptsd-20120425
This is is not a B.S. situation and wars and killing have been going on for a very long time now. We are sure that some of the things that you describe--urination and desecration of corps etc--have also been going on for a very long time now. This is particularly true when different cultures are involved where there is less understanding. As an example, American soldiers probably treated Japanese soldiers far worse than they did German soldiers during world war two. The idea of the suicide purposefully done as a weapon of war instead of the supposed heroic giving of a life to save ones buddies that we see memorialized in western culture may be a contributor to all of this. If one is willing to give ones life to take others lives--suicide bombers--then their enemies are less likely to respect them for any number of reasons. Life appears to be cheap and easily given so there is less respect for that kind of event than the heroic western death among equal combatents where respect is won even in death.
As far as death by suicide goes with your 18 per day figure, this may be clouded just a bit. A large number of world war two and Korean war vets are passing away at this time and some of them may choose suicide over a lesser quality of life in their decling years. Quality of life also included the mental aspects of life. We know one Korean war vet who is taking drugs at this time as he tries to reconcile what he did in Korea with his faith. The only reason that he does not commit suicide is because his faith strictly forbids it. Still yet, the taking of any life among people of faith is usually a violation of their most sacred beliefs and admonitions. This creates conflicts mentally as life goes on. In addition to that, seeing others going off to war and the casualties that ineviatably come from war bring up, again and again, what the veteran has gone through in their years of war. For many, it is a nightmare that they have a problem discussing and that they internalize, which is a very bad thing for ones mental health. My uncle was a decorated veteran of the pacific campaign in world war two. He was in and out of hospitals during the rest of his life and joined the 18 a day in 1979 after 36 years of nightmares that made his life a living hell on this earth. People are usually trained from early on to be respectful and cherishing of the lives of others and war is not the natural state of things. There is a warrior class in this nation and people like George W. Bush delighted in leading them off to an uncessesary war. Many of those who surrounded Bush now surround Mitt Romney who has shown proclivities toward wanting more war himself. There are those who are scarred mentally by war for the rest of their lives, then, there are those like John McCain who still, despite what they went through, have a desire for more conflict. Then there are people like George W. Bush who never went to war but are fascinated by it and the pseudo great leader syndrome that gives them the high that comes from participating in war. Then you have those like Barack Obama who have to make the phone calls and go to the airport to welcome home those who come back in those military coffins.
And, most vets coming home from war have no words for anybody as they try to move on from what they had the misfortune to have had to endure. We do have a difference in our soldiers now, however. They are all volunteers and some who are attracted to that life are the lovers of killing and of war. We have lost that drafted soldiers mentality that his nation called him and he reluctantly went and did his duty. The difference between draftees and volunteers is large and the false glorification of the volunteer has, for far too long, permiated this nation, giving it a false sense of what war is all about. The greatest heroes this nation and all the world have ever seen are those whom the nation called and then fell in battle at its beckoning.
Also in your 18 p3er day are the veterns of Vietnam whom so many of them wonder long into the night sometimes about why that war ever existed to begin with. If you want to trace the beginnings of drugs on a mass scale with the military, it began in Vietnam. And, the soldiers of combat in Iraq, as they age, may follow the course of the Vietnam veteran as they, from a perspective of some distance from war, will also wonder about why it was all necessary or not! It may seem heroic to go to war initially, but, the eyes of all of those who did not come back look down on sleeping veterans everywhere at it is all too often impossible to escape their stare!
IOVHO,
Regards,
Joe
To say that "God exists" is the greatest understatement ever made across space and time.
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