Surviving 'Collateral Murder': Soldier relives infamous WikiLeaks video (warning graphic war video)

[delrem]

6. Ethan McCord is a good man.

Someone who found himself in the wrong time and wrong place, in the wrong war, where his most deepset ideas/thought/dreams about what his country and society is all about got shattered.

I hate to say it but I can't see how his shattered state of mind got any help from Obama saying, re. the Bush war crimes, that "We need to look forward, as opposed to looking back". To be sure Obama's direction saves W's ass, and Cheney's ass, and the fat asses of the rest of the guilty party. But it leaves Ethan McCord and soldiers like him isolated - and not just isolated in a small way, but isolated from the very top all the way down to the people he meets on the street.

This also happened to Vietnam vets.

What I mean by "isolated" is "isolated from the verification of their community." In pop-psych terms this means: isolated from the closure that is their due. The fact is that Ethan McCord is subject not only to official isolation and negation of his experience, but to death threats. I can't help but think that this is all part of his experience of PTSD, and that McCord might not be alone.