9/11 Hysteria Too Expensive To Maintain
If the nation had gone on Freud’s couch after 9/11 he might have diagnosed it as hysterical.
Although this diagnosis has lost favor because some deem it as anti-female, it originated with women but was not confined to them.
It concluded that hysterical symptoms were part of an attempt to protect the patient from psychic stress and sometimes had other motives including gain.
One might say many in the nation suffered from PTSD, especially the editors near Ground Zero. It made them vulnerable, even duty-bound, to support the Bush-Cheney war machine.
In years past the human cost of phony missions searching for WMDs might have been reined in by the cost of dead soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines.
Not an easy problem to resolve. Certainly we could use the all-volunteer military to avoid the Vietnam scenario. Still, frequent deployments would be required. To induce the required enlistments expensive bonuses, health care and educational grants would have to be promised.
It worked well until the PTSD and suicide rate began rising sharply among those fighting the wars. Neither was new to war. Some said Westerners had evolved to the point where killing at all, even in self defense, would scar them. The expanding use of roadside explosive devices created more head injuries. And generally speaking, most soldiers were deployed outside the wire longer than those in World War II. Studies then, by the U.S. government, found the longer the GIs were on the front lines the less effective they became.
Anecdotal signs of the cost were war crimes that turned up on YouTube. Urinating on dead Taliban was hardly the worse. There is a saying. We must remember who we are and who we are not.
Now with the date for ending the Afghan war still not known, and Iraq still explosive, President Obama wants to cut 100,000 soldiers.
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