Charles Whittington, Vet Who Wrote About Addiction To Violence, Barred From College

[BurtWorm]

This is one of our victims of military training. This young man's mind is destroyed. And he's far from the only one. The military mass-produces young men who have the instinct against killing beaten out of them. That's good for soldiers, but then what happens to these men when the war doesn't need them anymore? Well, this is what happens to them:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/23/charles-whittington-vet-w_n_787344.html




An Iraq War veteran who wrote an essay about his addiction to violence for a community college English class has been barred from the school's campus.

Charles Whittington's essay, which can be seen in full here, was also published in the Community College of Baltimore County's campus newspaper. In the essay, Whittington, a former infrantryman, wrote that "war is a drug," and that "killing becomes a drug, and it is really addictive:"

To this day, I still feel the addictions running through my blood and throughout my body, but now I know how to keep myself composed and keep order in myself, my mind. War does things to me that are so hard to explain to someone that does not go through everything that I went through. That's part of the reason why I want to go back to war so badly, because of this addiction.

According to the Baltimore Sun, Whittington received an A for the essay from his teacher, who encouraged him to publish the piece. But after it appeared in the campus paper last month, Whittington was told by school officials that he would not be allowed on campus until he had a psychological evaluation.

Whittington told the Sun that his violent impulses are controlled by counseling and medication.

...

[Brickbat]

1. That poor man. What a fucking mess.

[Iris]

2. Why is this man's voice being silenced?

This is a story that needs to be told.

[gratuitous]

3. The heretic must be banned

Mr. Whittington is preaching against our national religion, and that is unacceptably dangerous. Our country believes fervently in the redemptive power of violence to overcome any problem, including and especially the problem of violence. Like all matters of faith, it endures in the face of all evidence to the contrary, and brother, is there a lot of evidence that violence doesn't overcome violence. But if we're going to inculcate the tenets of the High Church of Redemptive Violence in our children, we can't have apostates running around denying the faith.