Iraq Three Years On: Don't Look Away

Poet Nguyen Duy, veteran of the North Vietnamese signal corps declares, “It is easy to kill. On the front lines, war is not about politics, it is about staying alive. And it is a situation from which there is almost no way out.”
Edward Tick-War and the Soul
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Stop the Next War Now
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When the survivor cannot leave war’s expectations, values, and losses behind, it becomes the eternal present. This frozen war consciousness is the condition we call post-traumatic stress disorder.
Edward Tick-War and the Soul
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Iraq: Pure War, Pure Crime
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A diagnosis of anxiety disorder wrongly assumes a pathological distortion that we can treat or medicate back into normalcy. This misunderstanding denies the ultimate nature of the transformation causing survivors and their families to feel frustrated and alienated and demonstrating our culture’s denial of war’s impact. …it is so important to recognize PTSD as an identity disorder.
Edward Tick-War and the Soul
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Ann Wright: Iraq War Makes World Less Safe
Ann Wright, former Deputy Chief of Mission at the US Embassy in Mongolia for the US Foreign Service, feels as long as the US remains in Iraq, the violence there will continue. Wright said the US needs to leave as soon as possible and leave it up to the Iraqi people to decide if they want an international presence and, if so, whom.
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Moreover, such an understanding aligns PTSD with the archaic goal of war as a form of initiation. Modern warfare damages and destroys the youth and his character and threatens him with annihilation at the very time rites of passage are suppose to mature him in psychologically nurturing socially useful, and spiritually enlightened ways.
Edward Tick-War and the Soul
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Bill Moyers | A Culture of Corruption
Bill Moyers argues that money is choking our democracy to death. Our elections are bought out from under us, and our public officials are doing the bidding of mercenaries.
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From Vietnam War air force veteran Jim Helt:
"For me "collateral damage" is one of the most insidious phrases in the English language. At first brush it seems rather innocuous, but it means dead and wounded non-combatant women, children, men, elderly. It sanitizes death..."
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Iraq Three Years On: Don't Look Away
Three years after the toppling of Saddam, Iraq is a bloody mess: yesterday 70 people were killed in an attack on a Baghdad mosque. Patrick Cockburn reports on three years of broken promises in a blighted land.
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"General, your tank is a mighty vehicle.
It shatters the forest and crushes a hundred men.
But it has one defect:
It needs drivers.


General, a man is quite expendable.
He can fly and he can kill.
But he has one defect:
He can think.”

-- Bertolt Brecht
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"Never again shall one generation of veterans abandon another."