A Disillusioned American Soldier's Return From Iraq

[kpete]

A Disillusioned American Soldier's Return From Iraq
By Corine Lesnes
Le Monde

Saturday 18 March 2006

One thing has become intolerable to him: fatty food. French fries, hamburgers. Since he's been back from Iraq, soldier Erik Bunger hasn't been able to go into a fast-food restaurant, although before he went to them "all the time." He can't bring himself to watch television. "There are lots of things about Western society that don't work for me any more," he says.

At 23, Erik Bunger has already spent three years in Iraq and Afghanistan with the parachutists of the 82nd Airborne Division. He signed up in order to pay for his studies. Now the Army is financing his tuition at Augustana College in Sioux Falls, South Dakota at the rate of $1,000 a month. He has begun to let his beard grow, a sign of recovery far from the Army. The Democrats have tried to enroll him as a candidate in the next elections, but he has resisted.

"I am sorry for whoever is the next president," he says. "The situation in Iraq can't be fixed." Three years after the start of the war, two thirds of Americans think as he does, according to the latest polls. "The clan culture has gotten the upper hand," the soldier explains. But Erik Bunger also deplores the prejudices that are rife and hardy in the United States: "There are a pile of stereotypes about Muslims. People think they're the same as terrorists."

On the ground, the young soldier never received any psychological support. Officers did not encourage consultations. They gave a name to those who sought help: "psychos." After leaving the Army, Erik began to have panic attacks: "That happened to me whenever people began to argue." He's had nightmares, suffered from anxiety: classic symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). The trauma has decreased since he began to militate with other veterans. They are campaigning against the administration's plan to revise the criteria to define PTSD in order to limit reparations.

According to an Army report, one soldier out of three returning from Iraq suffers from mental problems. The proportion of personnel affected is the highest of all recent conflicts, from Bosnia to Afghanistan. "In Iraq, there's no front line," explains Colonel Charles Hoge in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Eighty to eight-five percent of personnel have been witnesses or participants in a traumatizing act: enemy combat, death of an adversary, IED attacks.

"In Vietnam, there were secure zones where people could recuperate," indicates Steve Robinson, director of an association that advocates for veterans in an interview with the Washington Post. "That doesn't happen in Iraq; every place is a war zone."

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/032006E.shtml

[hadrons]

1. I wish this guy the best .....

[sutz12]

2. And so we destroy another generation...

I have brothers and friends who have not recovered from Vietnam. Some of that shit just never goes away.

[LSparkle]

3. Every day I hear another story about traumatized Iraq vets / families

We have not even BEGUN to come to grips with the "blowback" from this war. There is SO much pain out there in the country that * and his cabal just want to push under the rug, but it WILL NOT stay there. As a nation, we are going to pay for a long time in many ways for what we put these men through and then denied even happened.

[JuniperLea]

4. The only troops the mainstream media ever talk to

seem completely at ease with their service and say the war is going great. I'm beginning to think this is some sort of self-preservation mode that their minds go into so they don't have to deal with the horrific seriousness of the situation.

I feel for this young man and his family. No one should have to go through this kind of crap just to make some asswipes richer than they already were.

[raccoon]

6. come to think of it, though, would the MSM media hos

talk to a disgruntled serviceperson who said the war was totally fubar, etc., and if they did, would it be aired?

[MADem]

7. Service personnel get "the briefing" with regard to press relations

In short, it goes like this: If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all...and one word against your chain of command, up to and including the Commander in Chief, and you are toast!

Most kids decline to be interviewed, mainly, because they are afraid of the consequences, and fear that the reporter will not adequately shield their identities. The few times you see dissent, there will be a little phrase saying "A (corporal, sergeant, lieutenant, captain) who asked not to be identified..."

[Hobarticus]

5. That eighty-to-eight-five statistic is interesting...

It dovetails neatly with the statistic that says 75% of troops there say we should come home.

My father's stepson is the other 25%. Naturally, he's some kind of career officer and is deep in the rear with the gear, but he's all full of rah-rah horsehit. In every picture that dad sends of him, he's in a clean and pressed BDU. What an assclown. So much for esprit des corps, you'd think he'd be much more concerned for the guys who can't stay in the Green Zone like him and are getting attacked day and night.

[MADem]

8. We'll see how Mistah Hoo-Rah feels when he's rotated forward

It'll happen, eventually. Even if he is hooked up with some general, they've got new rotation rules that force these desk warriors out with the regular folks after a few years. It used to be, clowns with the right connections could fly a desk for a decade or more, but now, ya wanna promote, ya gotta get your ass off the swivel chair and out into the field. Past time for that sort of thing, IMO....