The Death Of The American Soul

Read the following Times UK article (courtesy truthout) and consider this: there are worse things that could happen to our soldiers than being killed in battle. One of the great horrors of war is that ordinary individuals quite often have to commit terrible acts just in order to survive, let alone complete the task to which they have been assigned. We can decry the slaughter of civilians, but I cannot honestly say that, if put in the same position, I would not do similar things. Just try to imagine it. You are deep in hostile territory. You are surrounded by people who hate you as much as they hate the regime that has oppressed them. None of your training has prepared you for this situation. Indeed, just days before you were being told by your commanders that you would be greeted as liberators. You know that enemy forces have attacked your fellow soldiers while disguised as civilians, even under the flag of surrender. Would you really be any better an example of man's love for his fellow man? This conflict is producing many more casualties then those who come home in flag draped coffins or leave parts of their body lying back on the battlefield. It is destroying the souls of individuals who have had to look into the vacant eyes of children that, seconds before, they had to gun down due to the fear that they might be carrying a bomb meant to blow them apart. They will spend the rest of their lives having to deal with that image. They will either become human wreckage or, even worse, turn hollow on the inside and view their fellow man as nothing more than "sick people" and themselves as the "chemotherapy" that will clean them out. Thanks a lot George.