"You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it."
General William Tecumseh Sherman
"Just wage total war -- Children will sing great songs about us"
Oct. 29, 2001
Michael Leeden, American Enterprise Institute, research fellow
"Liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk"
Feb. 13, 02
"Nearly 70 percent of Iraqis who said they suffer from mental disorders have contemplated suicide but only a fraction have sought treatment, according to a nationwide study....
From a recent study conducted by the World Health Organization about Iraqi mental health.
Many Iraqis, like many of the soldiers America sent to liberate Iraqi Oil, now suffer from mental disorders.
It is not surprising.
Recently there was an Army report of an alarming rise in the number of suicides among American soldiers. The stress of " repeated combat deployments" was seen as a major problem, according to the Army.
So it is with those that inflict suffering on others. Not only does the victim suffer but those that have inflicted the harm must also lose a bit of their humanity in the process. American soldiers, like all soldiers of war, have to cope with the brutality and dehumanization of war. American soldiers, like all soldiers, don't get to choose their wars or their battles. They only pay the price with their lives, health, and sanity.
For the most part, Americans waved their flags, supported their President, and went mentally goosestepping in an orgy of patriotism for a hopeful "Mission Accomplished" in the months before the Iraq war. By all accounts, it was to be a good war--"a cake walk".
As an American, I witnessed the ignorance and the cold blooded lack of caring among most of my countryman. This is a trauma that I share today with many Americans that had raised objections to the mental goosestepping and the blind patriotism that would eventually bring about so much suffering and destruction.
I remember watching films of Adolf Hitler when I was young and seeing the German army goosestepping and the overjoyed Germans worshiping their Fuhrer. I remember thinking "how could people be like that stupid?"
I now have that answer. I have witnessed America's own psychotic war fever.
We were a people caught up in the glory of ourselves. A people caught up in lies. A people caught up in the thirst for the blood of their enemies. A people living in an unreality of a "cake walk" war and "weapons of mass destruction."
So the Iraqi war has cost Americans nearly a trillion dollars. Of course, the war will cost a lot more money when it is all done. As an American, I know that it is the bottom line that we are mostly concerned with here in this country. "What is it going to cost me" is an expression commonly heard in America. But the Iraqi war has taken a toll that will cost more than just dollars for many decades to come.
I can never feel the same way that I once did about my country before the war. I had a picture of my country painted for me by years of propaganda and conditioning courtesy of my government, media, and other societal structures. I thought in a democracy, the truth would eventually save the day. Unfortunately I was wrong. The country is not a democracy and the truth is not presented in the managed media.
Now the war drums are beating again for another war in Iran. It is no longer "weapons of mass destruction" but Iranian nuclear weapons that we must fear. It is no longer a tyrant "Hitler" in Iraq but now it is a "Lunatic Madman" in Iran that is seeking to destroy my country.
So the media and the American Military industrial Complex is trying to get Americans to mentally goosestep into another war. We already have wars in Iraq and Afghanistan but that is not enough. There needs to be more wars to protect the future of America.
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