One flew over the coo coo’s nest!
Today marks the tenth anniversary of the 2003 invasion of Iraq!
Today also marks the tenth anniversary of the end of my personal campaign to stop that war before it began. I entered a mental institution on this day ten years ago!
I had always been close to my mothers younger brother! She had been his personal guardian angel since he had left the military service during the Second World War. He had been a hero in that war but he had also thrown all of his medals down the family well on my grandfathers farm at the close of his service to the nation. His war would only end in the early summer of 1979 when he picked a warm July morning to go outside of one of the many homes and institutions that he had spent most of his post service life in, to put an end to his life with a razor blade.
My uncle had spent approximately two years of his life living with my family as my mother vainly sought to give him some sort of life outside of the Veterans Administration. There were twin beds in my room and he and I occupied them. He always dreaded the evenings when we would go to bed as he would fight the never ending battles of the Pacific theater where the enemy would endlessly chase him night after night. The two bronze stars and two purple hearts that he won for heroics mattered not to him as he fought to maintain some sort of sanity against it all. He finally gave up the fight and went back to the care of the V.A. when I was about eleven. But he left me with a perspective on war at a young age that not everyone has.
In the summer of the year 2000 I sold my insurance agency and began a journey that would lead me to places that I never contemplated in my life. This took me away from the hundreds of families that I had helped to care for financially and began to place me into a potential situation of isolation. This isolation became complete when I separated from my wife and two step children and ended a marriage of over thirteen years. I moved into a townhouse with my cat Lucy and we began a new life together alone. At that same time I deepened my involvements on the Internet as I began to write frequently on a financial based chat site called Raging Bull. I became well known there and achieved some notoriety as a stock market analyst.
By the mid winter of 2003 I began to become aware of just how dangerously close to war that this nation was drifting and memories of my uncle and the horrors of war spurred me on to change my focus from financial matters to opposition to the coming war. I wrote constantly in opposition to the war as the winter progressed, little knowing that it would do no good at all as the Bush administration had long ago cast its lot with those who love war. Indeed, we are firmly convinced that Bush himself loved war!
The day that the president addressed the nation was a very sad one for me but I still could not accept that this was the course of action that the nation was going to take. It would take me a very long time to come to grips with the fact that nothing that I could have done would have changed anything at all. I felt personal responsibility for what was about to happen and I ended up in my living room with a gun to my head, ready to end it all. Something deep inside me from childhood surrounding my religious upbringing told me that if I ended my life I would go to hell. I ended up calling 911 and help was soon there! I surrendered my gun and accepted a trip to the region’s main mental health facility. There, my isolation ended and recovery began to take place. The facility that I was at was a beautiful place that could easily be mistaken for an old, private college with its stately brick buildings and fine old oak trees in a setting that was over one hundred and fifty years old. The staff was dedicated and cared deeply about me and my well being. I stayed there thirty five days and came out of my experience with perspectives that are still with me to this very day. And I feel, now, much closer to my uncle than I ever have before. I have met people over the last ten years who have lost loved ones to suicide and I recognize that, especially in my uncle’s case, that life can sometimes be a living hell right here on this earth. I can sympathize with those who do not believe that suicide is a ticket to hell, but, for me personally, that belief saved my life.
There are risks to admitting that one has been to a mental institution because there are those who have prejudices so deeply held that they can never look at a person the same way once they know that has occurred. Make no mistake about it, they are prejudices and almost every human being on this earth has gone through times in their life when they could have used some potential mental assistance and intervention. Isolation is a great breeding ground for mental problems and we urge anyone who reads this to avoid that entanglement at all costs. We now have a large circle of friends and acquaintances, old and new, and what we feel is a very vibrant life. We also write this to spread the concept that there are many casualties when it comes to war, many far from traditional battle zones. There are many battlefields and many scars that remain with so many for a lifetime. And so many of those wars continue to be fought in the solitude of isolated minds.
There are the parents of the living and the dead who have served. There are the spouses and the children who have lost a service member who will be forever affected by what has happened to them. And, there are the service members who have survived. And, so many of them will tell you if you can get them to talk at all that so often it is down to basic survival in a kill or be killed world that so many who have not experienced it can never understand nor comprehend. War is alien to most human things and feelings. It runs contrary to so many things and alters and affects so many in so many ways that can never be described with words alone. We see the headlines about the numbers of returning servicemen who have committed suicide and that only underscores the magnitude of the problem at hand. Had I committed suicide as an individual, my statistic would probably never have been associated with the war!
It has been well documented what the Bush administration did to bring this nation to a state of war and most all of those actions were deceptive and duplicitous at best. People like George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz combined and contrived to change the trajectory of this nation for ever more. It is something that we have always felt that they had no right to do. However, might makes right in devious minds such as theirs! We are Christian in belief and we also believe in a very forgiving God. We also know that there will be a day of judgment and that these people will stand individually, naked and alone when they face that bar. We have, after ten years, forgiven but we cannot forget the thirty thousand lives that were either lost or damaged as a result of their actions. And the potential millions of others like me who were adversely affected by what they did. Most don’t like even the thought of war and people who love it are very difficult to comprehend indeed. Despite what we read, most human beings would never harm a hair on another human beings head. The Bush administration turned a portion of a generation into armed and licensed killers and once this bridge has been crossed it is very difficult to recross it again. What a person does, despite whatever sanction they have been given, lives with them for a lifetime and creates dark moments that sometimes only death can erase.
God only knows the number of wars that nations have to fight because they have no other choice. But to pick a fight and sacrifice lives and futures with no real cause is, in our eyes anyway, a mortal sin, and, although we are forbidden to pass any judgments as a Christian, we can not help but wonder where the reward is for people who lead a nation into unnecessary wars that destroy the futures of so many otherwise innocent souls.
We would like to close this piece with a quote from the second chapter of the book of Isaiah in the Christian Bible: “And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”
IOVHO,
Regards,
Joe
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