Major Danny Sjursen's reflections — regarding the high cost to low strategic benefit ratio — of US military service — in an era of clueless American warmongering

© 2019 Peter Free

 

12 March 2019

 

 

Not everyone will agree with former Army major Danny Sjursen

 

But the chances are that those who do not are:

 

 

short-sighted

 

unethically inclined

 

medically ignorant

 

historically and culturally unaware

 

or

 

just stupid.

 

 

He concludes his personal observations about post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among the US military with these thoughts:

 

 

The military takes these kids, trains ‘em for a few months, then sends them off to some unwinnable war (Iraq and Afghanistan are the current go-to spots).

 

There, they’re sometimes killed or mutilated, but more often than not they suffer PTSD and moral injury from what they’ve seen and done.

 

Then they go home, released into the wild of some shitty garrison town.

 

At that point, the trauma begins to manifest as major depression and crippling anxiety. Finally, just to function, or in order to fit into society, the vet begins self-medicating; alcohol is most common, but opiates, and eventually even heroin, are also prevalent.

 

If they spiral too low or consider/attempt suicide, well, then, they end up along with yours truly in an inpatient facility.

 

Our country . . . has waged perpetual war, across the globe, against an ill-defined enemy and with scant hope for “victory,” for nearly two decades.

 

It’s cost some 6 trillion tax dollars, sacrificed 7,000 soldiers and contributed to the killing of perhaps 500,000 foreigners, including 240,000 civilians.

 

It has done so with a professional, volunteer military, one that’s disjointed from the populace and largely operates in the shadows.

 

Through it all, you’re no safer now—maybe less so—than on 9/11, when many of the damaged vets I met were just children.

 

[T]he war machine rolls, flattening all before it.

 

© 2019 Danny Sjursen, Uncle Sam Sent Me to Rehab for PTSD, TruthDig (11 March 2019)

 

 

Were I Sjursen

 

I probably would have written "the war profit machine" — so as to highlight why the American military industrial complex so enjoys maiming many hundreds of thousands of people, including its own children.

 

 

The situation to which Sjursen points — reflects a massive moral failure of America's elders

 

Morally worthy cultures assume that elders should wisely protect and guide (insofar as possible) their young.

 

Instead, American society throws its economically disadvantaged youth into the fire.

 

 

Nine years ago

 

I essentially observed that:

 

 

Effective war requires intelligent strategy and a balanced assessment of the predictable behavioral and psychological evils that come from committing to it.

 

Our invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq lacked both sound strategy and a rationally defensible balancing of moral evils.

 

Those two wars [and absolutely every American-initiated conflict that came afterward]:

 

escalated worldwide resistance to our geopolitical efforts

 

diminished our standing as a moral example to other nations

 

did physical and psychological harm to thousands of our warriors by putting them in geopolitically unnecessary survival situations

 

and

 

killed and maimed innumerable Afghanis and Iraqis for no persuasively good reason.

 

These moral and strategic losses are the price of American leadership's ignorance, cynicism, and moral vacuity.

 

 

The moral? — Welcome to American culture . . .

 

Where no one powerfully influential ever learns anything about the societal underpinnings of ethical wisdom.

 

When a society prizes avaricious acquisition over humanity and accountability — this is where we wind up.