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Kovic writes: "Each year as the anniversary of my wounding in the war approached I would become extremely restless, experiencing terrible bouts of insomnia, depression, anxiety attacks and horrifying nightmares. I dreaded that day and what it represented, always fearing that the terrible trauma of my wounding might repeat itself all over again. It was a difficult day for me for decades and it remained that way until the anxieties and nightmares finally began to subside."
Vietnam Veteran and peace activist, Ron Kovic. (photo: BBC)
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My gosh. I just posted a very similar message over on the RSN article about Cheney's Haliburton profits. Much of the rest of the world sees our government as a mad dog that they would prefer be quietly "put down" for the good of the neighbohood (the rest of the world). Sad, but true. They may like individual Americans, but they despise our government.
All the money spent on them together does not make up a tithe of our wasted efforts at "defense".
But that's how it's always been. I recall my brother's return from Vietnam after constant jungle firefights (he lost count at 87), eternal malaria trimming him from 165 to 120 pounds, and the onset of horrible, hideous nightmares that have since then resulted in screaming fits in the wee hours. The VA at the time discarded PTSD as nonexistent. Ditto for the hideous internal growths resulting from his constant drenching in Agent Orange.
Remember this: The rich plan and summon wars and their pretenders, but the rich don't fight. Our nation is just a cash cow to them, nothing more.
More Ron:
http://www.myhero.com/go/hero.asp?hero=kovic
We live in a death culture approaching that of Franco's Spain or Stroessner's Paraguay (formerly supported by the US).
If you want -and have the stomach- to hear more tales of this kind, go to a "Veterans for Peace" meeting. They are there for their returning, surviving walking wounded, crippled and mentally unbalanced comrades as support of a unique kind having been through the same corporate/gover nment greed-driven Hell.
They are all over the country and many welcome non-veterans to bear witness.
Young men NEVER have the faintest idea of what they are getting into when they go off to war. To combat. There is no way for the human mind TO grasp this horrendous reality until one is in the "thick of it".
Young men, like Kovic, a second tour Marine in Vietnam are forced into a whole NEW attitude about war and combat when finally they have had a "belly full".
And now, to add additional sadness to unspeakable horror, our young women want to be "up to their armpits" in *real* combat units also.
Let me just predict for ALL human beings ..... once you have seen combat, as Kovic indicates, ALL this "God, Mom, and Apple Pie", B.S., all this "Patriotism" B.S., all this "Fighting for Freedom" B.S. and the even more surrealistic "We have to destroy the Village in order to SAVE the Villlage" bullsh*t goes right out the window.
Good luck, Ladies...... and All The Best to you !
“After my evacuation from Okinawa (in 1945), I had the enormous pleasure of seeing Wayne humiliated in person at Aiea Heights Naval Hospital in Hawaii. Only the most gravely wounded, the litter cases, were sent there. The hospital was packed, the halls lined with beds. Between Iwo Jima and Okinawa, the Marine Corps was being bled white.
“Each evening, Navy corpsmen would carry litters down to the hospital theater so the men could watch a movie. One night they had a surprise for us. Before the film the curtains parted and out stepped John Wayne, wearing a cowboy outfit – 10-gallon hat, bandanna, checkered shirt, two pistols, chaps, boots and spurs. He grinned his aw-shucks grin, passed a hand over his face and said, ‘Hi ya, guys!’ He was greeted by a stony silence. Then somebody booed. Suddenly everyone was booing.
“This man was a symbol of the fake machismo we had come to hate, and we weren’t going to listen to him. He tried and tried to make himself heard, but we drowned him out, and eventually he quit and left. If you liked ‘Sands of Iwo Jima,’ I suggest you be careful. Don’t tell it to the Marines.”
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