The prior generations faced the same horrors as do these men and lived with it, so we have to identify what is the glaring difference.
I will offer that the main one is they return to a world where the cannot find work and a way to feel useful and purposeful again and they also see that everything they were told they were fighting for is a facade. The country is led by people who are actively undermining it at every turn. Realizing that their comrades in arms died for nothing. The very people they were told are our enemies and they killed are being let into this country in droves. That is a big paradox.
I agree with your asessment. And I would add that they return from a world of structure, discipline, and honor to one without any of those virtues. The resultant anomie drives them to the margins of society and too often to suicide.
I agree and often wonder how “money” has much to do with it. If a guy is going to put a pistol to his head, drunk or sober, and pull the trigger, there’s simply nothing that can reasonably be done to stop that by anybody residing on earth.
We are also spending million of dollars and endless research on why a couple of transvestites kill themselves.
“The country is led by people who are actively undermining it at every turn. Realizing that their comrades in arms died for nothing. The very people they were told are our enemies and they killed are being let into this country in droves. That is a big paradox.”
Come home from that and have to get counseled by Major Hassan, or a military that would tolerate him, have to hear every day how wonderful islam is, etc.
US soldiers disciplined for stopping rape of children by Afghan police
I wonder if stories like that are just the tip of the iceberg of what our soldiers had to deal with daily then and there, and now in their thoughts and nightmares here at home.
Adding things like that to everything else that's completely FUBAR everywhere you look, no wonder their suicide rate is so outrageously high.
Yes, we fought in war and never heard of PTSD. Many of us got out of the hospital from being medivaced from RVN to Japan and then the states and we got a job after discharge. The military disability retirement system these days is easy to get medically retired from. We have Vets who never saw combat who claim PTSD and get disability now. Those psychiatric pills do a job on vets. The VA shrinks keep them doped up.
Despair is fought with purpose. They went to war not knowing that there is also a war going on at home. Not with weapons but with deception and lies, corruption and injustice, betrayal and treason. They came home to find the vow they had taken to be forsaken at the highest level of their government and its proliferation becoming evident in the departments meant to support their future.
They live with their brothers having died for them. The greatest love. They have not been told of the eternal facet of that love. They do not realize the eternal facet of the single battles they fought and that they are part of the war that has been waged since the fall.
My brother died in Nam. He died saving his platoon. He loved them. The One who died for us all and sees each sacrifice that echoes His own will not allow them to have died in vain. They each did their part in the time they were given. Now they stand before Him asking how long it will be until He comes back to end all wars.
My place of peace is thinking about that time. Getting there takes perseverance and is described as “overcoming” in His word. I pray every day they never give up.
“The prior generations faced the same horrors as do these men and lived with it, so we have to identify what is the glaring difference.”
Prior generations had decent rules of combat .
Today these guys are under constant threat from the higher ranks for protecting themselves .