Ft. Hood

I wonder how all those parents/spouses/children of the over 5,000 who died in Iraq and Afghanistan, or those of the 18 veterans who kill themselves everyday, feel about flags at half-mast and up to the nanosecond coverage of the memorial for the 13 who died last week. The yellow ribbon guy must be doing very well this week.

No one deserves to die from violence, especially young men and women who signed up because they (we) believed in an ideology that is 100% dead. There is no camaraderie in the military (or our country), minus the lower enlisted, but even that changes once people get promoted. And that the idea of 'freedom' we were preserving by signing up was simply the freedom for contractors to ruin lives and rob our tax dollars. A preachy, redundant thing to say, but a truth nonetheless.

With that said, in the larger scope of the 2000 decade of war, PTSD, lies, missed families, divorce, alcoholism, drug abuse, and suicide; the Ft. Hood shooting simply does not compare in terms of violence, unnecessary loss of life and the looming/continuing collapse/degradation of our civilization.

Just a week or so prior to this incident, 14 soldiers died in Afghanistan. And the only fucking reason it received any media coverage whatsoever was because President Obama went to Dover airfield to salute the dead as they came off the plane (which most likely was political). The only reason it got any coverage was so the left/right wing media could either praise/condemn the president.

And also, NO ONE (besides CBS ) talks about how many veterans commit suicide when they come home. I think the most harrowing statistic is that veterans are twice as likely to commit suicide than non-vets. This CBS article states that there are nearly 18 veteran suicides a day. In case you don't know, take the 13 who died at Ft. Hood and add 5 to that, and that's how many veterans kill themselves everyday. In case you didn't know.

And also, nearly 23% of the homeless in the US are veterans, even though 89% of those received honorable discharges. How is it we allow this to happen? How? How? You must understand the feeling I get when I am in my car and see a vet with a pizza box sign begging for help and he doesn't understand that I fear one day I may be him, and that in some weird way I want to be him, so he doesn't think I'm the same empty person like all the others that pass him by. This also seems like a tragedy.

This is yet another disgusting result of living in a 'for-profit' world. To suggest that I don't have compassion for those who lost their lives at Ft. Hood is ridiculous. But we must understand that this sensationalism is nearly an equivalent to spitting on the graves of those thousands who fell before this incident, and whose death's may have had an impact on the shooter's motives. Suggesting it's a tragedy that 13 soldiers who died while preparing to go to war, and could have possibly died in Iraq or Afghanistan without anyone dropping the flag in their honor, is like saying it's a tragedy you spilled water on your swimming suit on the way to the pool.

If you truly want to honor a soldier, you never should send them to an illegitimate and unnecessary war in the first place.

Have a Happy Veterans Day, and make sure to buy a car or sofa in the name of the true spirit of military remembrance holidays.