The Political Awakening of (A) Republican:

[Victor_c3]

11. Kind of a chilling article for me

I've posted this on several other threads, but I started life a conservative (although I never agreed with the religious stance of the party). Much like this guy, I had the similar belief of the good of war and that it is needed to enforce a peace. I found myself in Iraq in 2004 and the war changed me hard. I had no idea what to expect when I deployed. Actually, none of us did. 2003 (the first year of the war) was a formative year for the insurgency. By 2004, the Insurgency was in full force and attacks and military deaths peaked. I served as an Infantry Platoon Leader and I was working out of Baqubah, Iraq. In short, they don't put Infantry in nice places - and it didn't take long for the intensity of the war to catch up to me and my unit.

A few years back I was reading an article about PTSD and why the numbers of Soldiers in todays wars are staggering compared to those of wars past. Yes, I do know that PTSD wasn't even recognized as an official mental disorder until the 1980s, but it was known by a variety of other terms in the past. In WWII, because of the way that fronts and units shifted, the average American Soldier saw combat once every 6 months. In Korea is was once every 3 months and in Vietnam, it was once every 3 weeks. When I was in Iraq, My platoon probably had something happen to it once every 2-3 weeks. It wasn't always hardcore combat, but we'd get a struck by an IED, or engaged in a small arms ambush, a couple of random sniper shots when we'd conduct a dismounted patrol, a hand grenade thrown at us, and then, very occasionally, involved in a large-scale attack.

As an aside, many of the "cowboys" in the "wild west" are theorized to have been civil war veterans who were mentally messed up by the war. I believe the Hells Angels and a bunch of biker gangs were started after WWII by a bunch of psychologically broken veterans seeking adventure and who couldn't adjust back to "normal" life.

Anyways, without getting into the gory details, you don't have to stuff too many body bags with bits and pieces of what used to be human beings to make you question your one cherished beliefs. The war started a reaction in me that took a couple of years to fully develope, but it turned me hard to the left in my political leanings.