PTSD: A Cancer of the Spirit

[unhappycamper]

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/03/08




PTSD: A Cancer of the Spirit
by Robert C. Koehler
Published on Thursday, March 8, 2012 by CommonDreams.org

Can we squeeze the glory out of the word “war”? Can we talk about savage irrationality and lifelong inner hell instead? Can we talk about the wreckage of two countries?

Can we talk about spiritual cancer?

In the extraordinary documentary On the Bridge — an unstinting look at the reality of war and the terror of PTSD, directed by Olivier Morel — each of the six Iraq vets who opens his or her heart in the course of the film has a moment of deep, almost unbearable silence at the end, staring into the camera and through the camera at the viewer . . . and at the nation they are committed to waking up. In that silence, those are the questions that begin to emerge.

On the Bridge bares the deep psychic wounds of America’s returning vets — “I liken (PTSD) to the comedic scene of opening a closet and stuff keeps falling out,” Jason Moon said at one point — but it does much more than that as well. It puts these wounds into context: We are the aggressor nation, not simply at the geopolitical level, invading and occupying a nation and commandeering its resources, but at human level, with American GIs routinely dehumanizing and brutalizing Iraqis on the streets and in their homes.

[polly7]

1. Trot those *ing warmongers to The Hague.

No, not the people sent to fight their filthy war ... but, the psychopaths who absolutely knew the kinds of atrocities in this article would happen and the effects it would have on all involved.