Hundreds of new victims of the so-called War on Terror have been identified right here in the United States:
- 121 people killed by veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in the last six years.
- 349 homicides by active duty members of the military and recent veterans since the war in Afghanistan was started six years ago. The U.S. government trained them to kill, and by gum, they did. That’s an 89 percent increase of such homicides from over the last six years.
Out of the hundreds of thousands of American soldiers, the huge majority don’t come back to the United States to kill people here. However, more members of the military come back to the United States to kill civilians here than did before George W. Bush’s war began.
Their victims ought to be counted as victims of those wars. Not a single American has been killed by a terrorist within the United States since September, 2001. Hundreds of more Americans were killed by American soldiers warped by the anti-terrorist wars.
Call it a surge.
(Source: New York Times, January 13, 2008)
I agree, the victims of these killings should be counted among the war dead. I agree with your overall political message. But the veterans who committed the acts are not “soldiers gone wild” and they did not “come back to kill” as if that was their intention.
They are good people who need help- help that we are not giving them when they return. Please try to open your heart to them too, instead of caricaturing them to make a point.
I wanted to sympathize with your point, but no, sorry, but I do not agree that murderers are good people.
I am not caricaturing people who kill other people, halfway around the world from a battlefield, by calling them murderers. Murder.
The soldiers who murder other people are not the big victims. The people they murder are.
I am sick to death of this cult of Support Our Troops that always says that someone else is to blame when a soldier does something wrong, like torture, rape and murder.
Oh, the poor little thing, the soldier, who is a good person and just needs a support group, and otherwise wouldn’t murder, torture, rape? No, Jan, no.
There has to be a limit.
If you don’t regard murder as someone going wild, well, how would you characterize someone as going wild?
Why don’t you just call murder murder? Don’t shilly shally around with calling it “the acts”. “The acts” are murders.
I’m not in favor of putting these people to death, but I’m also not in favor of this ridiculous poor little murdering soldier routine.
My heart is not open to murder.
Yes, these soldiers were probably twisted around by their wartime experience – but that’s not a full excuse to murder. It’s no reason to call them “good people”.
Hundreds of thousands of others have been through these wars and still chose NOT to murder, even though many of them have been psychologically maimed by the experience.
The wars are to blame, but so are the people who volunteered to go, and then came back and committed murder here in the USA.
It goes without saying that soldiers are trained to kill and to follow orders. Regardless of whether the killing is done under the illusion that to do so is only in defense of the nation, it is hard for some to put that genie back in to the bottle from which it came when they return to the States. See the video trailer for Soldiers of Conscience on our web site at www dot arlingtonwestsantamonica dot org as well as some of the other information available there regarding the needs of those who are returning from war. Arlington West is a project of and by Veterans, for veterans and their friends and loved ones and the friends of loved ones who have lost someone as a casualty of war; whether that be by suicide, by accident, or while engaged in combat.
Do you have a memorial to the people murdered by soldiers who have returned?
I am a soldier. I am a volunteer, and I am currently in Afghanistan. There is a fundamental flaw in the fear-soaked reasoning of “we trained them to kill and that’s what they do when they come home.”
We are also kindergarten graduates, each and every one of us who you speak of as “them, they, trained killers, mercenaries” and so on. We know that violence and killing have no place on the streets and in the homes and workplaces of America.
Here’s a simple fact; people will kill other people occasionally. No statistics have been given by the NYT to compare against the ones that they created (and they did, admittedly, create them… they even complained that no one else kept such statistics.) Others have examined the numbers against national averages and found that you are less likely to be killed by a combat veteran than you are by a non-veteran.
What soldier-haters and those who are frustrated in their hatred of the current administration and their inability to have their way now are doing is painting veterans with a brush that is akin to racism, and it is exactly what I expected of you. It is childish, and it is slanderous, and it is emotional ranting.
We are not turned into murderous robots by our service. We are all kindergarten graduates, and we know right from wrong. Some people will kill, it’s true. But we are not lame, we are not psychotic by virtue of our service, and we are not evil by reason of our participation in the Global War on Terror.
I have been shot at. I have put people who I know in zippered bags, wondering what happened to the rest of the brains that were in their head before the explosion. I have seen horror that you cannot imagine. I have also seen nobility that you will never fathom, not once, in your entire life.
You know not of what you speak. We are just people. The statistics indicate that we are more likely to be murdered by one of you than you are to be murdered by one of us.
Because unlike us, not all of you are kindergarten graduates.
Way to try to twist the statistics, Old Blue. You’re kindergarten graduates, and you’ve been trained to read. Do you not read when you see words?
Soldiers are more likely to be murdered by other people than the other way around because there are more non-soldiers than soldiers.
Soldiers are more likely to murder than other people.
The increased number of murders by soldiers is far more reliable.
You’ve had the Support Our Troops chant going loud and strong for years now, and STILL there are immense numbers of soldiers coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan who have been turned psycho by the experience. These people are now a threat to the people around them, and they weren’t before.