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John Cory begins: "How lost are we, that we cannot feel and hear and see the anguish of war? Orrin Gorman McClellan, a 25-year-old Vet, died on May 18th. It was suicide by alphabet - PTSD. His mother, Judith Gorman, said, 'He never really came all the way home.'"

Figures photographed through the gunsight of Orrin Gorman McClellan in Afghanistan, 06/15/09. (photo: Orrin Gorman McClellan)
Figures photographed through the gunsight of Orrin Gorman McClellan in Afghanistan, 06/15/09. (photo: Orrin Gorman McClellan)



The Jungle of Screaming Souls

By John Cory, Reader Supported News

02 October 10

Reader Supported News | Perspective

"take your pleasantries
your generalizations, good intentions,
sweet words, and half-truths,
put them in a box.
drape a flag over it.
and bury it with the rest of the dead."


- Orrin Gorman McClellan, veteran/poet
March 22, 1985 - May 18, 2010


ow lost are we, that we cannot feel and hear and see the anguish of war?

Orrin Gorman McClellan, a 25-year-old Vet, died on May 18th. It was suicide by alphabet - PTSD. His mother, Judith Gorman, said, "He never really came all the way home." The Seattle Times article by Hal Benton is here.

The suicide rate among veterans and active-duty soldiers is escalating at an alarming rate. Over the weekend of September 24-26, Fort Hood had four suicides and a murder. There have already been 14 suicides at Fort Hood this year, and this is only one military installation.

How lost are we?

Five soldiers have been charged with murder for sport in Afghanistan, where fingers and human bones were taken as trophies along with photographs of corpses. Add this to the growing list of atrocities like Haditha, Abu Ghraib, Hamdania, the killings at the canal, Mahmoudiya, the torture at Camp Nama and the as yet undiscovered evils hidden in the mountains and desert sands.

In September of 2003, Spc. Alyssa Peterson, an Arabic-speaking interrogator, was assigned to the prison at Tal-Afar. After two nights, Alyssa objected to the interrogation techniques and refused to participate. A few days later she committed suicide. More here.

Three months later in Tikrit, LTC. Allen West watched four of his men beat an Iraqi detainee and then West threatened to kill the man as he fired a pistol near the prisoner's head. In a closed-door tribunal, West pleaded guilty to aggravated assault and was relieved of command, fined $5,000 and allowed to retire early with no loss of rank or benefits. More here.

Allen West is now running for Congress in Florida.

A former Marine Second Lieutenant, Ilario Pantano, is running for Congress in North Carolina. His story of shooting unarmed Iraqi men is here.

How did we get so lost? Where were the Generals?

Gen. Stanley McChrystal saw to the cover-up of Pat Tillman's death until he met his match in Mary Tillman, Pat's mother. I wonder how McChrystal would fare against the angry mothers of the prisoners abused and tortured at Camp Nama, which was under his command? Of course, he now has a job position at Yale. He's just following role models like -

Colin Powell is on the media circus circuit explaining how "bad intelligence" got us into all this and if only he had had good intelligence and blah-blah-blah. Powell's hands have been dirty for a long time.

Powell not only helped with the initial cover-up of My Lai but also defended a general accused of MAM (military-age-male) hunting. Read this article by Robert Parry.

There are two quotes from Colin Powell's memoir, "My American Journey," that have always disturbed me:

On war: "The kill-or-be-killed nature of combat tends to dull fine perceptions of right and wrong."

On seeing a dead Vietnamese body: "... I felt nothing, certainly not sympathy. I had seen too much death and suffering on our side to care anything about what happened on theirs."

And there it is: the de-humanizing of the enemy from one of the most admired men in America. Never ask about the other side - those human beings you have been sent to kill. Never listen to their cries for justice and mercy. Shoot - Move - Communicate - and press on. Never look around and feel. Never look back and question.

During one of my first trips back to Vietnam after a day of scuba diving in Nha Trang, I kicked back in a bamboo bar next to the dive shop with a Tiger Beer and fell into a conversation with a Vietnamese businessman who had been an officer in the NVA. The bar TV played newsreels honoring the birthday of Ho Chi Minh. As I watched the footage I turned to my new friend and asked him what they called the Vietnam War. With an impish smile and another order of beer, he said, "Why, we call it the American War, of course."

Bao Ninh was an enemy. At seventeen he joined the Glorious 27th Youth Brigade. 500 soldiers strong to fight the Americans when they started, he was one of only ten survivors. His story parallels American vets in that he spent years battling demons, drug abuse and alcoholism. Bao Ninh found himself through writing. Some have called him the Vietnamese Tim O'Brien. He wrote the award-winning fiction novel "The Sorrow of War." Here is the view from the enemy:

"The diamond-shaped grass clearing was piled high with bodies killed by helicopter gunships. Broken bodies, bodies blown apart, bodies vaporized.

No jungle grew again in this clearing. No grass. No plants.

From then on it was called the Jungle of Screaming Souls ... passing this area at night one could hear birds crying like human beings. They never flew, they only cried among the branches. And nowhere else in the Central Highlands could one find bamboo shoots of such a horrible color, with infected weals like bleeding pieces of meat ... Here, when it is dark, trees and plants moan in awful harmony. When the ghostly music begins it unhinges the soul ..."

It is here, in the Jungle of Screaming Souls, that two Vietnamese soldiers helping a post-war team search for remains discuss the ghosts of war: "If we found a way to tell them news of a victory would they be happier?" Kien asked. The driver of the body-collecting vehicle said, "Come on! Even if we could, what would be the point? People in hell don't give a damn about wars. They don't remember killing. Killing is a career for the living, not for the dead."

For too long we have followed men like McChrystal and Powell with their "sweet words and half-truths" and now find ourselves not warriors, but war-lovers standing in our own Jungle of Screaming Souls as our veterans and soldiers commit suicide or violent crime or suffer PTSD or worse. We have de-humanized the enemy and ourselves. In the cutting words Orrin wrote: "Everything you create puts a sour taste in your mouth and every action you take burns you with shame."

In 2006 I stood on the khaki-colored desert between Nad Ali and Marjah with my friend and police commander Gul Aqa (not his real name), after a bad day in which three of his men had been killed or wounded by an IED. I asked him how he dealt with decades of war. He was a boy when the Russians first invaded Afghanistan and then a young man under the Taliban. He was pushing forty that day.

"For you," he said, "war is a wind that whirls you all around the world. You come and leave with the wind but this is my home. And this wind will grow tired soon and blow away to someplace new."

What passes for today's media will continue to give adoring coverage to war without end, and the corporate rise of Colin Powell and Stanley McChrystal and the likes of Allen West and Ilario Pantano, and hail them as "heroes" and true American success stories. And more is the pity.

America wanders lost and embedded in its Jungle of Screaming Souls.

In Navajo Hozho means balance and Hocho means chaos. Many of the famed WWII Navajo Code Talkers underwent the Enemy Way Ceremony upon their return to overcome the ghost sickness (hocho) and restore harmony (hozho) and healing.

Orrin's ordeal inspired his parents, Judith Gorman and Perry McClellan, to establish the Veterans Resource Center for veterans and active duty military as a safe and tranquil space to begin healing the modern ghost sickness of unending war and to find Hozho. A place for "deep listening" as Judith calls it.

There is a certain ironic beauty that perhaps one path out of the Jungle of Screaming Souls lies in an ancient ritual called The Enemy Way.

Maybe that's why I like to imagine that I am sitting with Orrin Gorman McClellan and Alyssa Peterson on a bluff overlooking the Strait of Juan De Fuca, watching whales breach and curious eagles glide by under a blue sky as I tell them how my friend and fellow vet, Ted Engelmann helped bring the diary of Dang Thuy Tram, a young Vietnamese doctor from Ha Noi back to her mother and family in Vietnam and how the book, "Last Night I Dreamed of Peace," written by a woman we called an enemy, became one of the most popular books ever in Vietnam and around the world. And then I would read this passage to them:

"If only I had wings to fly back to our beautiful house on Lo Duc Street, to eat with Dad, Mom, and my siblings, one simple meal with watercress and one night's sleep under the old cotton blanket. Last night I dreamed of peace."

-Peace-


Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.

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