I'm posting this because it needs to be seen...
and I care. I'm not going to cut it, just scroll if you don't care. (And if you do scroll, or have any kind of problem with this, please, let me know.) I'm making it public, because everyone needs to see it. There is nothing I, nor anyone, can add to it.
Please pass it on.Suicide Was the Only Way Out of Iraq for Col. Westhusing ( Read more... )
Please pass it on.Suicide Was the Only Way Out of Iraq for Col. Westhusing ( Read more... )
I do not want to offend. But this is what I thought when I read it.
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I hate it when people die in Iraq. And with Sandy going there soon, I would really very much like it when the killing would stop there.
I hate it when people commit suicide in Iraq. And I would have completely understood it when the man had done so because of the brutal horror of it all. I would not survive that attack on my soul for very long.
Having said that, I feel a bit differently about this man. Because apparently he didn't commit suicide because of the horror and the killing. He did it because someone dishevelled his virgin sense of honor. And he did not know how to cope with that.
He was a West Point teacher. He was a philosophy PhD. He thought the war was good. He went there on his own volition. That's why I am analytical about the man and his death, more than that I am feeling sorry. I do feel for his family. Very much. But I do not feel half as much for the man as I would have thought I would when I first started to read the story.
I cannot believe the man had a PHD in philosophy and yet had so little clearness and forthrightness in his thinking and so little knowledge of the real world. Stubbornly in his nativity, is what he seems to me. Clinging to his beliefs. Not a philosopher. Not someone to ask the great questions of life and to really think them through.
Iraq showed him that all that he believed in was untrue, or at least a very limited view of the real world. And frankly I suspect he was the last one to see that. After he'd seen that, he could not go back to his old job, because he could no longer teach that there was honor in (this or any) war.
He realized that he was on the wrong track, and had been there since someone made him honor Boy Scout way back when.
It's a shame there was no one there to tell him that this is life. Very little honor but lots of gritty selfishness of people. It's a shame that a West Point teacher doesn't know that war is about gut-wrenching horror and razor sharp hatred and religious bigotry. It's a shame that in his life he hadn't experienced a serious attack on his belief system before his 44th year - and that he therefore was so helpless to respond to it.
But I cannot lament his death as I would any normal soldier's.
I feel the need to kick his butt.
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Again. I do not understand what it was that made you post this Kim, what message it held to you.
And also again: I am not trying to offend. I really apologize if I do.
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That said, I posted this because it is the sharpest, most searing anti-war message I've seen to date and I wanted to pass it on. There are people out there who STILL believe that Bush is good and is doing a good thing. Well, here's someone who believed that, to his detriment. And people need to know.
Perhaps you would understand if you, yourself were American. This is the first time I've had such a strong example of the cultural difference between Americans and the rest of the world. This guy is the epitome of this culture. This article illustrates what is happening to America, and all Americans.
This war is killing us all.
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Of course you don't.
When I wrote "I dont understand why you put it there", I meant that I didn't get what point you were trying to make, that the story seemed to be able to make many points, from where I was looking at it.
But yeah - there's definitely a difference between the US perspective and that of the rest of the world.
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Which until George W. Bush wasn't (for the most part) a BAD thing.
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