Amazing how we can train people to kill, but when they come home ... seems like a bad ide a!!!
On Sat, Jul 9, 2016 at 4:42 PM, MJ <[email protected]> wrote: > > April 17, 2014 > > *How America’s Wars Came Home With the Troops * > *Since 2002, veterans have been committing murder individually and in > groups, killing family, friends, strangers andin appalling > numbersthemselves. *By Ann Jones > > > > *This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com > <http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175832/>. To stay on top of important > articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from > TomDispatch.com > <https://app.e2ma.net/app/view:Join/signupId:43308/acctId:25612>. *After > an argument about a leave denied, Specialist Ivan Lopez pulled out a > .45-caliber Smith & Wesson handgun and began a shooting spree at Fort Hood, > America’s biggest stateside base, that left three soldiers dead and sixteen > wounded. When he did so, he also pulled America’s fading wars out of the > closet. This time, a Fort Hood mass killing, the second > <http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nidal-hasan-sentenced-to-death-for-fort-hood-shooting-rampage/2013/08/28/aad28de2-0ffa-11e3-bdf6-e4fc677d94a1_story.html> > in four and a half years, was committed by a man who was neither a > religious nor a political “extremist.” He seems to have been merely one of > America’s injured and troubled veterans who now number in the hundreds of > thousands. > > Some 2.6 million men and women have been dispatched, often repeatedly, to > the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and according to a recent survey > <http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/polling/wars-postkaiser-survey-afghanistan-iraq-war/2014/04/02/3e8f2380-b7a6-11e3-9eb3-c254bdb4414d_page.html> > of veterans of those wars conducted by the *Washington Post* and the > Kaiser Family Foundation, nearly one-third say that their mental health is > worse than it was before they left, and nearly half say the same of their > physical condition. Almost half say they give way to sudden outbursts of > anger. Only 12 percent of the surveyed veterans claim they are now “better” > mentally or physically than they were before they went to war. > > The media coverage that followed Lopez’s rampage was, of course, 24/7 and > there was much discussion of PTSD, the all-purpose (if little understood) > label now used to explain just about anything unpleasant that happens to or > is caused by current or former military men and women. Amid the barrage of > coverage, however, something was missing: evidence that has been in plain > sight for years of how the violence of America’s distant wars comes back to > haunt the “homeland” as the troops return. In that context, Lopez’s > killings, while on a scale not often matched, are one more marker on a > bloody trail of death that leads from Iraq and Afghanistan into the > American heartland, to bases and backyards nationwide. It’s a story with a > body count that should not be ignored. > > *War Comes Home* > > During the last twelve years, many veterans who had grown “worse” while at > war could be found on and around bases here at home, waiting to be deployed > again, and sometimes doing serious damage to themselves and others. The > organization Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW <http://www.ivaw.org/>) > has campaigned for years for a soldier’s “right to heal” between > deployments. Next month it will release its own report on a common practice > at Fort Hood of sending damaged and heavily medicated soldiers back to > combat zones against both doctors’ orders and official base regulations. > Such soldiers can’t be expected to survive in great shape. > > Immediately after the Lopez rampage, President Obama spoke of those > soldiers who have served multiple tours in the wars and “need to feel safe” > on their home base. But what the president called > <http://www.politico.com/story/2014/04/fort-hood-obama-heartbroken-105324.html> > “that sense of safety… broken once again” at Fort Hood has, in fact, > already been shattered again and again on bases and in towns across > post-9/11 Americaever since misused, misled and mistreated soldiers began > bringing war home with them. > > Since 2002, soldiers and veterans have been committing murder individually > and in groups, killing wives, girlfriends, children, fellow soldiers, > friends, acquaintances, complete strangers, andin appalling numbers > <http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/03/fort-hood-shooting-questions-high-suicide-rates-veterans-mental-illness>themselves. > Most of these killings haven’t been on a mass scale, but they add up, even > if no one is doing the math. To date, they have never been fully counted. > > The first veterans of the war in Afghanistan returned to Fort Bragg, North > Carolina, in 2002. In quick succession, four of them murdered > <http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0805/p03s01-usmi.html> their wives, after > which three of the killers took their own lives. When a *New York Times > *reporter > asked > <http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/29/us/wife-killings-at-fort-reflect-growing-problem-in-military.html> > a Special Forces officer to comment on these events, he replied: “S.F.’s > don’t like to talk about emotional stuff. We are Type A people who just > blow things like that off, like yesterday’s news.” > > Indeed, much of the media and much of the country has done just that. > While individual murders committed by “our nation’s heroes” on the “home > front” have been reported by media close to the scene, most such killings > never make the national news, and many become invisible even locally when > reported only as routine murders with no mention of the apparently > insignificant fact that the killer was a veteran. Only when these crimes > cluster around a military base do diligent local reporters seem to put the > pieces of the bigger picture together. > > By 2005, Fort Bragg had already counted its tenth such “domestic violence” > fatality, while on the West Coast, *Seattle Weekly* had tallied the death > toll among active-duty troops and veterans in western Washington state at > seven homicides and three suicides. “Five wives, a girlfriend, and one > child were slain; four other children lost one or both parents to death or > imprisonment. Three servicemen committed suicidetwo of them after killing > their wife or girlfriend. Four soldiers were sent to prison. One awaited > trial.” > > In January 2008, *The* *New York Times* tried for the first time to tally > <http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/13/us/13vets.html> a nationwide count of > such crimes. It found “121 cases in which veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan > committed a killing in this country, or were charged with one, after their > return from war.” It listed headlines drawn from smaller local newspapers: > Lakewood, Washington, “Family Blames Iraq After Son Kills Wife”; Pierre, > South Dakota, “Soldier Charged With Murder Testifies About Postwar Stress”; > Colorado Springs, Colorado, “Iraq War Vets Suspected in Two Slayings, Crime > Ring.” > > The *Times* found that about a third of the murder victims were wives, > girlfriends, children or other relatives of the killer, but significantly, > a quarter of the victims were fellow soldiers. The rest were acquaintances > or strangers. At that time, three quarters of the homicidal soldiers were > still in the military. The number of killings then represented a nearly 90 > percent increase in homicides committed by active duty personnel and > veterans in the six years since the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. Yet > after tracing this “cross-country trail of death and heartbreak,” the *Times > *noted that its research had probably uncovered only “the minimum number > of such cases.” One month later, it found > <http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/15/us/15vets.html> “more than 150 cases > of fatal domestic violence or [fatal] child abuse in the United States > involving service members and new veterans.” > > More cases were already on the way. After the Fourth Brigade Combat team > of Fort Carson, Colorado, returned from Iraq later in 2008, nine of its > members were charged > <http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/02/us/02veterans.html> with homicide, > while “charges of domestic violence, rape, and sexual assault” at the base > rose sharply. Three of the murder victims were wives or girlfriends; four > were fellow soldiers (all men); and two were strangers, chosen at random. > > Back at Fort Bragg and the nearby Marine base at Camp Lejeune, military > men murdered <https://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/10/06-4> four > military women in a nine-month span between December 2007 and September > 2008. By that time, retired Army Colonel Ann Wright had identified at least > fifteen highly suspicious deaths of women soldiers in war zones that had > been officially termed “non-combat related” or “suicide.” She raised a > question <http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/04/28/8564> that has > never been answered: “Is there an Army cover-up of rape and murder of women > soldiers?” The murders that took place *near* (but not *on*) Fort Bragg > and Camp Lejeune, all investigated and prosecuted by civilian authorities, > raised another question: Were some soldiers bringing home not only the > generic violence of war, but also specific crimes they had rehearsed > abroad? > > *Stuck in Combat Mode* > > While this sort of post-combat-zone combat at home has rarely made it into > the national news, the killings haven’t stopped. They have, in fact, > continued, month by month, year after year, generally reported only by > local media. Many of the murders suggest that the killers still felt as if > they were on some kind of private mission in “enemy territory,” and that > they themselves were men who had, in distant combat zones, gotten the hang > of killingand the habit. For example, Benjamin Colton Barnes > <http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2017153774_skyway04m.html>, a > 24-year-old Army veteran, went to a party in Seattle in 2012 and got into a > gunfight that left four people wounded. He then fled to Mount Rainier > National Park where he shot and killed a park ranger (the mother of two > small children) and fired on others before escaping into snow-covered > mountains where he drowned in a stream. > > Barnes, an Iraq veteran, had reportedly experienced a rough transition to > stateside life, having been discharged from the Army in 2009 for misconduct > after being arrested for drunk driving and carrying a weapon. (He also > threatened his wife with a knife.) He was one of more than 20,000 troubled > Army and Marine veterans the military discarded > <http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2018894574_vets12m.html> between > 2008 and 2012 with “other-than-honorable” discharges and no benefits, > health care or help. > > Faced with the expensive prospect of providing long-term care for these > most fragile of veterans, the military chose instead to dump them. Barnes > was booted out of Joint Base Lewis-McChord near Tacoma, Washington, which > by 2010 had surpassed Fort Hood, Fort Bragg and Fort Carson in violence and > suicide to become the military’s “ most troubled > <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/9139715/Afghanistan-massacre-soldier-was-stationed-at-troubled-base.html>” > home base. > > Some homicidal soldiers work together, perhaps recreating at home that > famous fraternal feeling of the military “band of brothers.” In 2012, in > Laredo, Texas, federal agents posing as leaders of a Mexican drug cartel > arrested Lieutenant Kevin Corley and Sergeant Samuel Walkerboth from Fort > Carson’s notorious Fourth Brigade Combat teamand two other soldiers in > their private hit squad who had offered > <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/27/men-with-army-ties-held-i_n_1382181.html> > their services to kill members of rival cartels. “Wet work,” soldiers call > it, and they’re trained to do it so well that real Mexican drug cartels > have indeed been hiring > <http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/drug-cartels-mexico-hire-u-s-soldiers-assassins-article-1.1454851> > ambitious vets from Fort Bliss, Texas, and probably other bases in the > borderlands, to take out selected Mexican and American targets at $5,000 a > pop. > > Such soldiers seem never to get out of combat mode. Boston psychiatrist > Jonathan Shay, well known for his work with troubled veterans of the > Vietnam War, points out that the skills drilled into the combat > soldiercunning, deceit, strength, quickness, stealth, a repertoire of > killing techniques, and the suppression of compassion and guiltequip him > perfectly for a life of crime. “I’ll put it as bluntly as I can,” Shay > writes in *Odysseus in America: Combat Trauma and the Trials of > Homecoming* > <http://www.amazon.com/dp/074321157X/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20>, > “Combat service per se smooths the way into criminal careers afterward in > civilian life.” During the last decade, when the Pentagon relaxed standards > to fill the ranks, some enterprising members of at least 0 fifty-three > different American gangs > <http://www.businessinsider.com/fbi-gang-assessment-us-military-2011-10> > jumpstarted their criminal careers by enlisting, training and serving in > war zones to perfect their specialized skill sets. > > Some veterans have gone on to become domestic terrorists, like Desert > Storm veteran Timothy McVeigh > <http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/history/famous-cases/oklahoma-city-bombing>, > who killed 168 people in the Oklahoma federal building in 1995, or mass > murderers like Wade Michael Page > <http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2012/winter/massacre-in-wisconsin>, > the Army veteran and uber-racist who killed six worshippers at a Sikh > temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, in August 2012. Page had first been > introduced to the ideology of white supremacy at age 20, three years after > he joined the Army, when he fell in with a neo-Nazi hate group at Fort > Bragg. That was in 1995, the year three paratroopers from Fort Bragg > murdered two black local residents, a man and a woman, to earn their > neo-Nazi spider-web tattoos. > > An unknown number of such killers just walk away, like Army Private (and > former West Point cadet) Isaac Aguigui, who was finally convicted > <http://www.cbsnews.com/news/army-private-convicted-of-murdering-pregnant-wife/> > last month in a Georgia criminal court of murdering his pregnant wife, > Sergeant Deirdre Wetzker Aguigui, an Army linguist, three years ago. > Although Deirdre Aguigui’s handcuffed body had revealed multiple blows and > signs of struggle, the military medical examiner failed to “detect an > anatomic cause of death”a failure convenient for both the Army, which > didn’t have to investigate further, and Isaac Aguigui, who collected a > half-million dollars in military death benefits and life insurance to > finance a war of his own. > > In 2012, Georgia authorities charged Aguigui and three combat veterans > from Fort Stewart with the execution-style murders of former Private > Michael Roark, 19, and his girlfriend Tiffany York, 17. The trial in a > civilian criminal court revealed that Aguigui (who was never deployed) had > assembled his own private militia > <http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/09/20/inside-the-georgia-militia-murders.html> > of troubled combat vets called FEAR (Forever Enduring, Always Ready), and > was plotting to take over Fort Stewart by seizing the munitions control > point. Among his other plans for his force were killing unnamed officials > with car bombs, blowing up a fountain in Savannah, poisoning the apple crop > in Aguigui’s home state of Washington, and joining other unspecified > private militia groups around the country in a plot to assassinate > President Obama and take control of the United States government. Last > year, the Georgia court convicted Aguigui in the case of the FEAR > executions and sentenced him to life. Only then did a civilian medical > examiner determine that he had first murdered his wife. > > *The Rule of Law* > > The routine drills of basic training and the catastrophic events of war > damage many soldiers in ways that appear darkly ironic when they return > home to traumatize or kill their partners, their children, their fellow > soldiers, or random strangers in a town or on a base. But again to get the > stories we must rely upon scrupulous local journalists. The Austin > *American-Statesman, > *for example, reports > <http://www.mystatesman.com/news/news/crime-law/shootings-involving-combat-veterans-raise-question/nfJqL/> > that, since 2003, in the area around Fort Hood in central Texas, nearly 10 > percent of those involved in shooting incidents with the police were > military veterans or active-duty service members. In four separate > confrontations since last December, the police shot and killed two recently > returned veterans and wounded a third, while one police officer was killed. > A fourth veteran survived a shootout unscathed. > > Such tragic encounters prompted state and city officials in Texas to > develop a special Veterans Tactical Response Program to train police in > handling troubled military types. Some of the standard techniques Texas > police use to intimidate and overcome suspectsshouting, throwing > “flashbangs” (grenades) or even firing warning shotsbackfire when the > suspect is a veteran in crisis, armed, and highly trained in reflexive > fire. The average civilian lawman is no match for an angry combat grunt > from, as the president put it > <http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/transcript-president-obamas-april-9-remarks-at-fort-hood-texas/2014/04/09/7a5690f0-c01c-11e3-b574-f8748871856a_story.html> > at Fort Hood, “the greatest Army that the world has ever known.” On the > other hand, a brain-injured vet who needs time to respond to orders or > reply to questions may get manhandled, flattened, tasered, bludgeoned or > worse by overly aggressive police officers before he has time to say a > word. > > Here’s another ironic twist. For the past decade, military recruiters have > made a big selling point of the “veterans preference” policy in the hiring > practices of civilian police departments. The prospect of a lifetime career > in law enforcement after a single tour of military duty tempts many > wavering teenagers to sign on the line. But the vets who are finally > discharged from service and don the uniform of a civilian police department > are no longer the boys who went away. > > In Texas today, 37 percent of the police in Austin, the state capitol, are > ex-military, and in smaller cities and towns in the vicinity of Fort Hood, > that figure rises above the 50 percent mark. Everybody knows that veterans > need jobs, and in theory they might be very good at handling troubled > soldiers in crisis, but they come to the job already trained for and very > good at war. When they meet the next Ivan Lopez, they make a potentially > combustible combo. > > Most of America’s military men and women don’t want to be “stigmatized” by > association with the violent soldiers mentioned here. Neither do the > ex-military personnel who now, as members of civilian police forces, do > periodic battle with violent vets in Texas and across the country. The new > *Washington > Post*-Kaiser survey reveals that most veterans are proud > <http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-seductive-allure-of-wars-were-not-winning/2014/04/11/4e5b9d70-c011-11e3-bcec-b71ee10e9bc3_story.html> > of their military service, if not altogether happy with their homecoming. > Almost half of them think that American civilians, like the citizens of > Iraq and Afghanistan, don’t genuinely “respect” them, and more than half > feel disconnected from American life. They believe they have better moral > and ethical values than their fellow citizens, a virtue trumpeted by the > Pentagon and presidents alike. Sixty percent say they are more patriotic > than civilians. Seventy percent say that civilians fail absolutely to > understand them. And almost 90 percent of veterans say that in a heartbeat > they would re-up to fight again. > > Americans on the “home front” were never mobilized by their leaders and > they have generally not come to grips with the wars fought in their name. > Here, however, is another irony: neither, it turns out, have most of > America’s military men and women. Like their civilian counterparts, many of > whom are all too ready to deploy those soldiers again to intervene in > countries they can’t even find on a map > <http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2014/04/07/the-less-americans-know-about-ukraines-location-the-more-they-want-u-s-to-intervene/>, > a significant number of veterans evidently have yet to unpack and examine > the wars they brought home in their baggageand in too many grim cases, > they, their loved ones, their fellow soldiers and sometimes random > strangers are paying the price. > > https://www.thenation.com/article/how-americas-wars-came-home-troops/ > > -- > -- > Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups. > For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum > > * Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/ > * It's active and moderated. 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