Another striking and important piece of journalism illustrates the personal impact of the Iraq war on young Americans who were sent there.

The documentary

It is striking for many reasons, including how young they were, and how utterly betrayed they were by their superiors extending many levels above them. Then they inflicted vast suffering on the Iraqis. And then they came home to aimlessness, suicidality, and lingering questions.

Soldiers’ testimony

One young man illustrates the simplistic motivations they had for going to war, including wanting the coolness of being a young combat veteran.

Another man, who is black, came to the realization that the photo of him with his knee pinning down an Iraqi while holding an assault rifle, was “not okay” in the same way that the murder of George Floyd, involving a police officer with his knee on the neck of a black man, was not okay.

He articulated how woe begets woe, how the mercy of the oppressed for the oppressed is our only hope. Multiply Floyd’s murder by ten thousand, and you have something close to what happened in Iraq throughout my young adulthood.

Older leaders sending young people to die

I believe that many people’s sense of self expands over their lifespan to include their neighborhood, city, political party, nation, and (sometimes) the world and all its species.

Consider William James’s comments on the psychological sense of self:

“In its widest possible sense, however, a man’s Self is the sum total of all that he CAN call his, not only his body and his psychic powers, but his clothes and his house, his wife and children, his ancestors and friends, his reputation and works, his lands and horses, and yacht and bank-account. All these things give him the same emotions. If they wax and prosper, he feels triumphant; if they dwindle and die away, he feels cast down, – not necessarily in the same degree for each thing, but in much the same way for all.”

The people in charge of the US military at the time of the Iraq invasion run-up (Bush II, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Powell, and Rice) were old. They believed that America was part of their selves and that the 9/11 attacks had wounded it. As long as Saddam remained in power, their selves lacked wholeness and integrity. They saw the lives of a few thousand young Americans (whose selves were focused on individuality, family, and hometown) as a small price to pay in order to make “themselves” whole again.

Look at the rantings of Putin on wokeness for how this applies to the current war in Ukraine. He views his self as including a Russian World, and as long as ethnically Russian Ukraine is separate, and liberal political ideas circulate in Russia, he is not whole.

Mentorship

I watched this documentary as I realized that younger people in my life are coming to me for support and guidance and I hadn’t understood this until now. I don’t know how to mentor a person but I know how to simply be a friend.

Endless braindead warmongering

I also found an article noting that no US political party (and no organized faction in either major party) has stepped forward as the anti-war party. Everyone favors escalating military spending and far-flung military operations with no clear goals.

From the article:

“The 2024 election cycle has only just begun. But the prospects are not good that we will have a serious presidential candidate who dares to disagree with current war policy. Never before has the chloroform of conformity been inhaled so deeply.

As has been famously observed, you make peace with your enemies, not your friends.

We can assume that any treaty will include America agreeing to foot the biggest part of the reconstruction costs. This amount may far exceed the funds needed to rebuild the schools for all the poor children in America. It may exceed the funds required to provide training for all the workers who will be put out of jobs by artificial intelligence.

We have a $31.5 trillion national debt, in good measure due to our military spending and forgiving trillions in debt as an incentive for other countries to forgo military solutions to problems.”

And in even dumber news, American idiots are volunteering to fight in Ukraine despite their meth convictions, lies, and harassment, “often with unchecked access to weapons and military equipment.” One of the morons who wanted to play soldier even defected to Russia shortly after arriving in Ukraine.

About the photo

Crows squabble, squawk, and play on a beach on Puget Sound in March 2023.