mTBI, PTSD and Stress (Catch All)

[Jedburgh]

A constant theme was that the public is largely unaffected by the war, and, despite media exposure, doesn't understand what it's like.

The United States that Iraq veterans are returning to is indifferent, many said. One that, without fear of a draft, seems more interested in American Idol than the bombings in Baghdad. Sure, there are the homecoming parades and yellow-ribbon bumper stickers.

But for many vets, those moments of gratitude were short-lived. Soon they were joined by bitter impressions of a society that seems to forget that it is living through the country's largest combat operation in more than 30 years.

Call me naive, but I thought our job was to keep the our civilian population from "knowing what it's like". But I also don't feel like they're "indifferent". Its not like the general civilian populace doesn't care - after more than 3 years in Iraq, there's still a very strong base of support that cares about the soldiers.

Support for the war may be dropping, but it does not manifest itself in a concurrent drop in the regular drives for goods to send to soldiers, kids in schools writing "any soldier" letters, people looking for substantive ways to make the troops feel comfortable over there - and I still see military members from every branch of service get thanked for their service by people from almost every walk in life, from senior citizens to young'uns (even when I was still living in CA).

That's good enough for me. I don't feel some sort of selfish urge for the US populace to suffer in some psychological or material way that would equate to anything that I went through on a combat tour. I don't want my family or anyone's family to sit around pondering the harsh reality of a brutal insurgency and worrying about the next bombing in Baghdad, let alone the slime that can be involved in tracking down and rolling up a terrorist cell.

We - the military, law enforcement, and intelligence communities - do our job so that average Americans can hang out fat and happy, have lazy family picnics, watch American Idol or reruns of Seinfeld, and just enjoy their lives.

Sure, as I've expressed on this forum before, I've retained some bitterness - but its over the decisions made by senior policy-makers - I don't blame those who I was supposed to be protecting from all this.

Now, there are some serious PTSD issues that come up in that article - that is a different story entirely. I don't think the services are doing all they can to identify and deal with potentially serious problems in that arena. Read between the lines of the article and that is what disturbs me.

[GorTex6]

Perhaps the bitterness against everyone back home is a result from feeling disconnected and isolated; a symptom of depression. I won't lie- I had it too. This is natural for any human being that is assimulating after war; if it lingers then you have a problem.

[CPT Holzbach]

Yeah, I felt some of that bitterness myself. For me, it was more like disappointment though. Disappointment in some of our leaders, but also in how easily the American people allow themselves to be lead around by the nose by the MSM. A Marine once said about Iraq, "Every time you #### on the war, you #### on the guys fighting the war." Now I dont completely agree with that, but I think it has some validity. It just seems that Americans defeat themselves, and that's incredibly disappointing to people who fight the war. Like a boxer who's winning a rough match, only to have his coach throw in the towel because he's afraid the boxer will get hurt too much. Except the coach isnt even at the fight. He just occasionaly tunes in on TV.