Avoidance

Movies are not an ordinary part of my life these days. But one recent presentation about a military veteran caught my attention. In one section of the movie there was a discussion about post-traumatic stress disorder and the mechanisms with which affected troops (or other people, too) live their lives in response to the disorder.

A psychiatrist spoke to avoidance as one means of coping. People avoid situations which may remind them of their past trauma. That was a mechanism I employed after coming home from Vietnam and in some measures continue to apply to this day. Our society today practices avoidance in dealing with the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan when we fail to see the images or to hear the pleas of the affected peoples.

The trauma of a war zone cannot be put into words. The experience is not one any human being deserves. Civilians, troops on both sides, and the land involved all suffer damage as a result of any war. In war the major insult is not to the troops but is rather to the civilians, the women, the children, and the aged who have no part in military activity. We must continue to remember every person on either side killed or wounded as a result of our military intervention is a son or daughter, maybe a mother or a father, perhaps a brother or a sister. Every life lost touches the lives of the many who surround that person. The damage spreads ripples throughout the surrounding society.

Walk a moment in the shoes of an Iraqi or Afghan civilian. Imagine your town is occupied by foreign soldiers. Imagine your cousin (or niece or brother) has been killed by the foreigners. How are you going to feel? Would you resist the occupation? What makes the Iraqi people one small bit different from us here in the U.S. or in any other nation around the globe?

Go one more step in your mind. Think about all the children born since the invasion who have known nothing but war in their short lives. How will this childhood affect them in the future? Will they be able to put this behind them and live peaceful lives or will they forever be scarred and turn into terrorists themselves?

I suggest we cease our avoidance and look to peaceful means of resolving world conflicts. The end solutions to terrorism will lie in social and economic change. We need to begin our pursuit of those measures as soon as possible. We must vote for those people offering the most hope of real change. Then we must remain vocal and keep in touch with those we elect to remind them they serve us first of all. Those we elect must lead our nation in the direction we choose. Only our continued action will insure the best course is taken.

Peace.

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Quote of the Day:

In peace, sons bury their fathers.

In war, fathers bury their sons.

-- Herodotus


From Northington Notes, June 30, 2010.