Our priorities need a revisit, perhaps

Thanks to Paul McGraw for helping me out when my Android needed a PC/Mac friend. Y'all need to read this article. Other articles from other affected areas around the country (Fayatteville, NC; Boulder, CO; Jacksonville, NC; Ft. Benning, GA; Ft. Drum, NY) are reporting similar spikes in suicides, attempts, spousal abuse, DUIs, civilian crime, etc, once these combat units return for good. A very good movie called "The Valley of Ellah" addressed this very issue but the country wasn't ready to listen, but it better had but soon.

Even our 12 million coming out of uniform following WWII got better community support than what we're doing for a lot of these heroes. Of course, back then it was OK to drink too much, weave home and beat your wife (up to a point) because that was the Golden Era of the Greatest Generation when white men ran things and women and minorities "knew their place."

The one good thing I've heard they are doing is setting up Veteran's Courts that will specifically address PTSD and other delayed or Acute Stress Syndrome problems that manifest in violent outbursts accompanied by dissassociative patterns in which the veteran does not remember doing the things he's being charged with, sometimes including the murder of family members like his children and grandparents.

And I want every one of you ignorant bastards who supported the adventure in Iraq but didn't support a draft that evolved into multiple urban warfare rotations to remember what Uncle JR warned you of at the time, especially those of you VA workers who can't recognize the irony of your paycheck while you rail at the "federal government", you dipshits.

What? You don't remember? And a few of you are now in management and still not veterans. How convenient. And weak. Let's be sure to beat back those "revenue" initiatives to treat our wounded veterans, ok? And DAMN that socialized medicine dispensed at the VAMC. That would suck if that AWFUL system were to break down, huh?

OK, it's officially a rant. I have a REALLY good idea for our country for the next 200-300 years: do whatever we can to avoid foreign conflict and entanglement. While our local "patriots" jabber all day about "outlays" and "funding requirements" (translation: your tax $$$), we should pay close attention to where we spend our money, to whom, AND WHY!  Perhaps we should stay the hell outta everyone else's business whenever possible. Granted, the invasion into Afghanistan to rid the world of the Taliban and al-Qaeda was necessary; however, how required was the invasion of and drive into Iraq? Especially given the fact that we essentially LEFT Afghanistan and allowed the the Taliban to re-arm and re-train in NW Pakistan, which is largely lawless and and an al-Qaeda enclave.  

Remember W's bombast about "fighting them over there so we don't hafta fight over here"? In case you didn't now, that program included shipping PALLETS FULL of CASH to local Sunni and Shi'a leaders and begging them not to fight each other or our forces. How dignified. May it have worked? I hope so, I truly do. But get them to admit to it first so we can have a baseline from which to begin an assessment of the program. Good luck on that.

Yesterday, my son, who is currently assigned to an honor guard section at a midwestern Air Force Base, had to conduct the funeral of a 25-year/old EOD sergeant who was killed doing his job in Afghanistan. The investigation of the incident is on-going, but what a waste of a young life. If only we had remained focused on the task at hand instead of treating the 9/11 attacks as a broadside against the Christian-secular world of finance and materialism by Islam as a religion; tragically, we have have willfully chosen to mistake the brilliantly simple plan to disrupt our pathetic, consumer driven lives by a few dozen, a few hundred at most, extremist radical jihadists as a master plot to overthrow, what, international commerce in an effort to drive us back into the stone age.

Why do we have this awful propensity to over-react to this stuff? Are our enemies dangerous? Hell, yes they are. That's why the National Security Agency has an unpublished, top secret budget. That's why 5-weeks before 9/11 George W. Bush was delivered, in an oddly prescient manner prior to Katrina as well, an in ironically named intel briefing entitled something like "Bin Laden to Fly Planes Into Buildings." So much for utilizing your experts on the ground, many of whom had warned that "something huge" was about to happen. Could it have been prevented? Who nows, but what part are we talking about? The initial 4 planes, probably not unless the FBI and CIA had corroborated better on who was in the country and where they were. But the horrible mess that resulted from the juvenile hysteria that ensued was an embarrassment for the entire world to see.

If this country is to remain solvent and capable directing it's own affairs, it must learn restraint. And tolerance. Maybe there's a "How to Be a SuperPower for Dummies" book. We need it. Now.