The Army needs to grow up.
If history informs me correctly, this probably won't happen until and unless we get our ass royally stomped in a major war.
"Major", as in the sort of world wars and Great Power wars that have become an endangered species since the advent of nuclear weapons.
England never did manage to get itself a world class officer corps until after the British Empire was gone. They were Just Plain Awful until the Cardwell Reforms. And no better than mediocre until at least a decade after the end of World War 2.
France managed their brief span of intellectual ascendancy mostly because (1) they were a continental power and couldn't afford to fuck around, and (2) they got hammered badly in the Seven Years War. That last drove five decades of military reform culminating in Napoleon.
The Prussians got hammered into the ground like a tent peg at Jena-Auerstedt. That gave them the horrible example they needed. The Militarische Gesselschaft (sorry, no Really Good Link - but read Bill Lind's more foundational essays and you'll find 'em) then laid out the framework for the next 140 years. Their final achievement, a century after they themselves were gone, was what many moderns refer to as third generation warfare.
IMHO, armies are conservative by their nature. When well directed, they can learn from serious defeats. When poorly directed, they learn from nothing at all, until oblivion makes the learning process irrelevant.
Our army has been, in general, very badly directed over the course of the last 140 years. The officer corps are, at the top, pawns of either businessmen or politicians or both. Neither of these groups, absent a polymath genius like Julius Caesar, can competently direct a military force. I see nothing on the horizon that is liable to change that.
No "real-man" or woman, no Soldier, would ever come down with combat fatigue. Only wusses, people who don't have "It", who aren't man enough or woman enough for the mission, want out. It means you're lacking something, some essential fire in your belly that people who don't get PTSD have.
Horseshit like this reminds me of nothing so much as the French concept of elan.
They played that one out when they attempted to implement Plan XVII in August of 1914. The Germans, who did not believe in "elan", ass-raped them inside of a month.
The Army needs to grow up.
The Army's full of grown-ups--mature, thoughtful, knowledgeable people who care about their country and the people they command and work with. And before about 70 months ago, that was the prevailing ethos of our military. Now, especially among the top leadership, emphasizing those values over whatever the C-in-C seems to have read in a comic book is a good way to ruin your career. This problem, like so many others in this administration, is one of those "the fish stinks from the head" things.
In particular, PTSD is a disease of the brave. You get it by doing something that scares the crap out of you, usually repeatedly--which is a textbook definition of "bravery." You can see how someone as craven as Bush and his inner circle are might find both the reality of other people's courage, and the responsibility for what they've done to better men and women than themselves, impossible to deal with.
Stories like this are so wrong on so many godsdamned levels.
In particular, PTSD is a disease of the brave. You get it by doing something that scares the crap out of you, usually repeatedly
Molly, NYC -
I really like that way of speaking, so much I may well steal it next time I write.
When I was a medic, I can't count the number of times I did stuff which at the time scared the hell out of me. But there wasn't time to think about that -- people's lives were at risk, so you simply move forward.
I used to tell myself, "Never take counsel of your fears" as I was moving down a dark ally looking for a shooting patient, when Houston or Tucson or Oakland police weren't there yet. Yes, we were told -- over and over and over to wait. But sometimes, we just couldn't find it in ourselves to wait around another 15 fucking minutes with a known shooting patient bleeding out and central telling us we had someone dying, waiting for the cops to show up. So we'd go in and look for ourselves.
Usually it would turn out okay. People don't normally stick around after shooting someone, ya know?
But it isn't less scary to be walking unarmed, down a dark ally or around the side of a house, or into a home, trying to find someone dying, when someone nearby has a gun and a demonstrated willingness to use it.
Or child abuse. Seeing little ones hurt. You have to turn off your natural emotions to deal with them, and their parents, who sometimes end up in your rig as well. You don't get to jab the parents who may have just killed or injured their children with your needles, or beat them to fucking death. You have to treat them well they're patients.
All this requires suppressing one's normal emotional space and acting in spite of it, over and over again.
Eventually, you reach a point where it is fully second nature, and you are unable to act in a so-called normal way, not even when you should.
It took me years, many many years, to be able to start to experience normal emotions again. And there are still triggers I am very careful to avoid, and likely always will.
my own journey with PTSD (three consecutive combat tours in vietnam) has been long and bumpy. there are things that still linger after all these years (just like the arthritis from the old wounds). my journey took me through the usual stuff, addiction, alcoholism, failed marriages, multiple jobs, lots of moving, all of that.
i still don't do well in crowds. when it is a controlled situation, like the crowd is out there and i'm on stage, i can manage. but things like a ball game or a crowd at a shopping mall have the real potential to send me into jesse's command mode. i don't flinch anymore at a car backfire. i can manage 4th of july fireworks once i see that they are decorative skyrockets and not the other kind. the flinching was a step up from dropping prone.
i quit medicating the nightmares. sometimes, they still come, but i react by reminding myself that "it's simply one of those nights" and try to busy myself with other things. reading, or puttering around the kitchen. i find a lot of solace in the kitchen. when i wake up startled, with the smell of cordite in my nose, something about the smell of bread baking, or the zen motions of rolling out a pastry crust has a calming effect. i still sleep a lot less, and not as deeply as someone who has never experienced the length and level of combat that i did. my body, and my soul was changed, radically and permanently.
for me, the goal is not to be "cured" but to find more gracefully adaptive ways of dealing with what is.
If you don't mind my saying so, I posted this very story here, last Tuesday, in a comments on the "Wounded Soldiers told: Pay Up Deadbeats!" thread (at 6:29 am), with a link to COMMON DREAMS where the article first appeared, last week.
I don't mind at all.
I totally missed it. It's been a very rough month for me, which is why I've dropped from 3 posts a day down to mostly none, and only now am starting to pick back up again to one a day. Where I picked up the story was from was Americablog.
Thanks for setting the record straight.
In particular, PTSD is a disease of the brave.
Molly, NYC -
"And I see no bravery,
No bravery in your eyes anymore.
Only sadness."
James Blunt: No Bravery
You tube is down or I would link to the song.
From his bio:
In essence, one day he was sleeping off a hangover at the back of a sociology lecture hall and the next thing he knew he was in Kosovo with a gun and a guitar strapped to the side of a tank, wondering who he could possibly sleep with to get out of this war. To break up the super attenuated monotony, James would sometimes stroll through Serb villages wearing an East German cap singing, “All we are saying is give peace a chance”. “We were peace-keepers at that point,” he explained, shrugging helplessly.
Link
You Tube back up
No bravery, live
for me, the goal is not to be "cured" but to find more gracefully adaptive ways of dealing with what is.
What minstrel says.
I don't have any real hope -- or wish for that matter -- of being "cured." Hell... I wouldn't even know what that would look like. I've been this way ALL of my adult life, really since I was still a teenager, given I worked my first Code Blue two months after I turned 17. And she died under my CPR, duh, as they always fucking do. But I didn't know it then, and know one bothered to tell me, and before you knew it, we were rolling on another call don't you know.
Didn't stop rolling till I was 29, 13 full years later.
So I'm very happy simply to have my adaptations be successful, and to be able to raise my kids well, and to get through a day's work without going off in any way. That's what I call a success.
The lie of PTSD is the 'D' part - 'disorder'. If you've been through the sh** that combat vets have been through it would be monstrous not to be kind of f***ed up by it.
That's not a disorder. That's what happens when you subject normal humans to inhuman conditions.
Our army has been, in general, very badly directed over the course of the last 140 years. The officer corps are, at the top, pawns of either businessmen or politicians or both. Neither of these groups, absent a polymath genius like Julius Caesar, can competently direct a military force. I see nothing on the horizon that is liable to change that.
From what I've been made to understand, it got a lot worse after WWII. During WWII, there were still some very substantial elements of meritocracy remaining, which had a lot to do with why we won in the face of the German Army, which was a more capable fighting machine. (It also helped that the US, USSR, and British colonies had significant petroleum reserves while Germany had to rely on ethanol-fuel and extracting fuel from coal-tar, but that's another post.)
After WWII, careerism and its attendant bureaucratic ass-kissing became a lot more important in the US military, which had a lot to do with why we lost in Vietnam, even though the US military gave the North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong guerillas a hell of a pounding in battle.
If someone had a broken bone, you don't say they have bone disease or a bone illness. You call that an injury. So PTSD is actually a brain injury, not a mental illness. Change that framework and we might see some progress in discussing what PTSD actually is.
I was googling up ptsd and mri a couple of days ago and found some interesting links. For one, mri can reveal an idicator of ptsd. Oh! And there was some study of mri having a positive effect on depression, rather than drugs. And one about a CBT that some veterans found helpful in managing events and reducing them.
"While such symptoms are commonly understood to be psychological problems, some or all of them may well be related to the physical effects of extreme stress on the brain."
http://www.thedoctorwillseeyouno...ehavior/ptsd_4/
http://www.everydayhealth.com/pu...64.xml&
cen=News
http://harvardmagazine.com/2004/...ifted-
spir.html
I don't think the soldier should have been arrested, of course. To me this is an injury, not an illness or a disease. You just can't see the injury like a broken leg, or bullet wound, or missing arms or legs, but it is every bit as real an injury to the person with it. They should allow this soldier to seek treatment any way he can and cancel his "back to Iraq" orders.
Deion - Exactly.
Myrtle June, thanks for the links. The first one went directly to something that's been bothering me since I read this post:
"...a prime cause of PTSD is childhood sexual abuse. About 16% of American women (about 40 million) are sexually abused (including rape, attempted rape, or other form of molestation) before they reach their 18th birthday.
Childhood abuse may be the most common cause of PTSD in American women, 10% of whom suffer from PTSD (compared to 5% for men) at some time in their lives.."
Jesse and his friend have their nightmares, triggers, and flashbacks. And I have mine.
We owe the Vietnam vets a lot, actually. They were the ones who put PTSD on the map; by 1980 or so, the psychologists who were treating them realized they were seeing exactly the same pattern in their female patients. Without the boys having it first, we would have gone on being sluts, frigid bitches, and hysterics (the usual tags hung on abused women before the same symptoms were validated because the men had them, too).
Being back in a war is bringing it all up again, which is a good thing. War has costs that history has never yet reckoned; perhaps once we get that balance sheet right and realize how much is really lost, we'll be persuaded to give it up for good.
But nobody is talking about what the loss of 10% of our daughters, mothers, wives, sisters, and workers costs. A hugely disproportionate number of them will end up with disabling immune issues like MS or lupus, because the stress causes so much damage to their developing bodies. They start out broken; and will only become more so throughout their lives.
That, too, is what PTSD does. It's not just for men. It never has been.
This is true, Mrs. Robinson, but it's a damn sight easier to avoid war than it is to socialize or otherwise remove from society all abusive men.
Of course, we haven't managed to do any of those things.
Imo, the uphsot of the linked story, though not directly expressed, is that the army would rather kill this soldier off in battle than heal him. Simple fact. The normal channels weren't designed to keep him healthy but to maximize the value of the army's investment in him. Healing is too much trouble; they need warm bodies.
Bush has turned the army into a RTS game. It's cheaper to produce a new unit than it is to heal an old one, so that's what the commander does.
Of course, cost-benefit is thrown out the window when it's time to pay the ind. contractors (and they don't cover medical, either).
"This is true, Mrs. Robinson, but it's a damn sight easier to avoid war than it is to socialize or otherwise remove from society all abusive men."
To my mind, these are efforts that will have to occur simultaneously if they are to be effectively done at all. The damage left in men by forcing them into the situations which war demands -- not to mention, the conditioning which boys get to prepare them for a manhood which will acquiesce to war -- arises from a system of dehumanization that helps create abusers.
Abusive men are made, not born. It's just as avoidable as war, and once the props are sawn through, the whole shebang will tumble down. In my opinion, of course.
I can agree with that, Maggie.
Without misogyny, neither is possible.
We wouldn't have such a huge number of Bush voters without misogyny.
The "save Afgahni women" campaign wouldn't have worked so well -- and we wouldn't have abandoned said women to the Taliban.
Still, one could have a nation full of abusive assholes that are nevertheless electorally trumped and kept from enacting broad political policy.
That, too, is what PTSD does. It's not just for men. It never has been.
thank you for the reminder mrs. robinson. when i am speaking of my own experience and my own knowledge i certainly would not want the thousands of others out there who have been through their very own wars. the symptoms of rape survivors, the folks who manage to finally escape abusive relationships, the children who find a way somehow to get through a hellish childhood, all will have the exact same symptoms and experience that exact same trouble getting through the night that those of us who have been in combat deal with. i in no way meant to imply that the problem was for men, and men who have experienced violent action alone. i merely spoke my own truth from my own life. yours is every bit as true and valid. thank you again for the reminder. even when it sucks to be me, knowing that i'm not sucking through alone is a strange comfort.
Abusive men are made, not born.
YES.
I wish this were generally understood. It isn't. Some places, and some families, are like factories for the production of damaged people.
When these are positively identified, they have to be shut down. Otherwise, they just keep on producing monsters, generation after generation after generation.
My father was an abuser. And he did NOT become what he was by choice or by chance. He was made into what he was. Three guesses how. But I think you'll only need one.
Thanks Mrs. R. Very well said.
I think those numbers of abuse/trauma are way low, btw. Indeed, there has been a renewed look at ptsd because of the returning vets this go 'round and certainly the Vietnam era vets could provide a wealth of information if only they'd ask them. The connection between stress injury and autoimmune response is becomming clearer as well.
Seems to me its a recovery or reconnection of self, of spirit, process more than a defined cure. Both Jesse and Minstrel have tool sets that work for them at this time. The kid in the story is having his process delayed and compounded by his "soldier up" treatment. That's not helpful. And I'm not sure that the reason for this policy isn't as No One of Consequence states above. Sure seems to be the case.
The connection between the autoimmune issues and these stress injuries is news to me. But it makes sense from what I've read in the last few days.
Martha Beck, in her book "Finding Your Own North Star", calls it "soul shrapnel". I agree that the injury compounds throughout life if it is not tended to, as she describes as well. Women too, have their own version of "soldier up" and it starts at a pretty young age in our society.
Great thread, great discussion.
Jesse and minstrel--
Jesse, you and I have had a brief discussion about being a medic before. In my brief brush with critical incident stress (similar to PTSD but not as chronic, although it can become so), what I found more useful than anything was EMD-R (Eye Movement Desensitiztion-Reprogramming). It uses REM-like eye movements, along with a therapist's expertise, to get things resettled a little better in the mind. Kids, do not try this at home! Only do it with a professional trained in its use. But it could well be very useful for both of you, if you have not tried it before. It may take a bit of searching to find someone knowledgeable about it, but it would be well worth it. God bless you both.
Hey CapD --
Yeah, I remember reading something about this. Don't remember if it was you, or someone else.
Thanks again for mentioning it.
I remember being impressed with how rapidly people seemed to take ground with the technique.
Perhaps I will bring it up with my therapist. See what he thinks. *smiles*
Thanks again for thinking of us. It's always appreciated.
Thanks for including chronic pain in that litany of things with high command value over your body and your life. Many of us won't ever see combat, but plenty of us deal with chronic pain issues. That may help a lot of non-combatants understand the toll of the injury of PTSD on its sufferers.
Anybody who thinks they can just gut it out through severe chronic pain, PTSD and other serious disorders has watched too many Chuck Norris movies or episodes of 24. In the real world, PTSD and chronic pain conditions turn you into a sad, strange shadow of yourself, no matter how innately tough you are. Only the right help and a lot of support gets you back to yourself.
Pain has made me a different person.
Upside: I'm beginning to understand my dad's stories and jokes about war, 11 years after his untimely death from a painful auto-immune disorder.
Downside: My kid is beginning to understand what my childhood was like.
Sideways: I have a glimpse of insight into my wife's PTSD, from childhood abuse inflicted by a war-scarred sociopath who was left untreated.
The notion that PTSD is an injury, not an illness, is a pretty powerful framing tool to identify appropriate treatment tools and options. If you're crazy, that's a personal problem; if you're hurt, there has to be a way to heal.
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