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"What It is Like to Go to War,"
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Box A Rox
March 27, 2012, 7:47am Report to Moderator

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A component of war that most Americans don't understand:
(CNN)
http://www.cnn.com/2012/03/24/living/karl-marlantes-war-books/index.html


The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral
philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.

John Kenneth Galbraith

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March 27, 2012, 8:07am Report to Moderator
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good read Box.................My best friends two boys (they think of me as their uncle) have now both been to war. Jamie spent 2 tours in Iraq with the 4th ID and then spent time in Iraq and Afghanistan as a civilian contractor...............he doesn't talk a whole lot to his Dad about it, but did let some details out........he has this posted on his facebook page:

                    
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I've seen horrors... horrors that you've seen. But you have no right to call me a murderer. You have a right to kill me. You have a right to do that... but you have no right to judge me. It's impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means. Horror... Horror has a face... and you must make a friend of horror. Horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not, then they are enemies to be feared. They are truly enemies! I remember when I was with Special Forces... seems a thousand centuries ago. We went into a camp to inoculate some children. We left the camp after we had inoculated the children for polio, and this old man came running after us and he was crying. He couldn't see. We went back there, and they had come and hacked off every inoculated arm. There they were in a pile. A pile of little arms. And I remember... I... I... I cried, I wept like some grandmother. I wanted to tear my teeth out; I didn't know what I wanted to do! And I want to remember it. I never want to forget it... I never want to forget. And then I realized... like I was shot... like I was shot with a diamond... a diamond bullet right through my forehead. And I thought, my God... the genius of that! The genius! The will to do that! Perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure. And then I realized they were stronger than we, because they could stand that these were not monsters, these were men... trained cadres. These men who fought with their hearts, who had families, who had children, who were filled with love... but they had the strength... the strength... to do that. If I had ten divisions of those men, our troubles here would be over very quickly. You have to have men who are moral... and at the same time who are able to utilize their primordial instincts to kill without feeling... without passion... without judgment... without judgment! Because it's judgment that defeats us.


You know the quote, it's from Apocalypse Now. My friends other son Josh is still in Afghanistan...............he was supposed to come home this month, but got extended for god knows how long......................he's already told stories of the war., not pretty................I wonder how many people who clamor for us to go to war have sons or daughters in the military...................I wonder how willing they are to sacrifice their children...........tough call  
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