De Oorlogsstaat 11

Dit is het gezicht van de oorlog. Dit vertellen de handelaren van de angst er niet bij, daarover zwijgen propagandisten als Hirsi Ali wanneer ze ophitsen om een oorlog te beginnen, die niet zij maar anderen voor haar moeten voeren. Natuurlijk wordt de verschrikking geheel omkleedt met mooie nobele woorden. Maar hoe hol die woorden zijn, blijkt al snel op het slagveld, maar ook daarna, als men eenmaal thuis geconfronteerd wordt met de herinnering aan de verschrikking. Dat is de ware power of nightmares. Zo schrijft de Amerikaanse marinier Charlie Anderson: 'My friend Doug Barber died on Martin Luther King Day. I hadn't known him long, but we had a lot in common. We both lived in the south, were both veterans of the Iraq War, both felt betrayed by our government for sending us to a war without purpose. Both of our marriages had been destroyed in the aftermath of the war, and finally, we were both struggling with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Doug and I both fought during the invasion of Iraq. He was an army National Guardsman and I was attached to the Marines. I don’t really know how Doug’s PTSD first manifested, but I do know he had a different battle than I did. I had been back less than a month when I found myself diving for cover when the neighbors launched bottle rockets. Soon I was unable to stand any noise that sounded like gunfire. I felt profound guilt that I had come home alive when others I knew did not, and I was plagued by nightmares of the horrors I had experienced far from home… Doug and I are not alone. 30% of Iraq veterans have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. The divorce rate among Iraq Veterans is very high. Homelessness, unemployment and drug abuse are also on the rise. As Doug put it in an article written shortly before he took his own life, “All is not okay ... for those of us who return home alive and supposedly well. What looks like normalcy and readjustment is only an illusion to be revealed by time and torment. Some soldiers ... will live with permanent scars from horrific events that no one other than those who served will ever understand.”' Lees verder: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/021106X.shtml