How to React When Your Societal World is Threatened

 

More often than not, when one finds their world under existential threats, the society under threat attempts to mollify the perceived grievances; if one were to be completely honest, something such societies are often found to be in short supply, the perceived grievance is their existence and the fact that the targeted society considers itself more enlightened and one that is superior often because it is so accommodating to the other, to almost every other even attempting to be accommodating to those who wish to supplant them. In the society under threat there will be those who will propose that the only way to survive is to be as ruthless and barbaric as those who wish to destroy everything they have. These people will be rejected and accused of being boorish brutes who are uncultured and have no ability to reason and that they are the reason the threat exists and if only they would tone down their alarmism and allow those with minds deal with the problems and find a solution where both sides get what they desire and both can then live in comfort and equality where both sides would enjoy enlightened lives in relative peace and understanding. How one is met halfway if their starting point is the eradication of one society’s way of life and entire social structure is beyond my meager intellect to compute exactly how much of the one society can be sacrificed that will allow those who are the destroyers to be satisfied that they have destroyed a sufficient amount of the other society that they are satisfied and no longer desire to destroy the entirety of the other society. Would allowing the destruction of one third do or must it be a fifty-fifty split or perhaps the others are truly energized and really hate the society and will only be satisfies with three-quarters of that society destroyed. If their intended goal is your total destructions, then guess what, only your total destruction will quench their blood lust. And this does not mean just the creature comforts and advanced luxuries and the trappings of your society, they probably also want everybody from your society dead or subjugated into servitude under their cruelest of conditions and little short of that will do to end their drive to smash everything you have built in a blood curdling frenzied lust for destruction of every last vestige of those structures and intricacies and comforts your society had afforded you.

 

There are numerous signs that such difficulties are headed your way as these things are rarely a complete surprise no matter how well you managed to ignore the signs, they were there and there were those who were screaming out warnings but the majority simply preferred to ignore the warnings and claim that this too will pass. When it is pointed out that these adversaries are talking of world conquest the majority of your society will laugh and chortle that nobody dreams of world conquest any more. Where that may be true in your all so egalitarian society where learned and studious men discuss the great moral debates of the day and all conflicts are mediated and violence is just so distasteful, world conquest went out with the two great world wars and died when the Soviet Union fell. Well, that did not end the numbers of people who dreamed of world conquest. There are still active Communist ideologues who believe in a world existing in a Communist Utopia run by, who else, them, of course. The Islamic Republic of Iran dreams of a Shiite Islamic world where all surrender before their rule and obey their edicts and nothing other than the Quran and the Sharia rule men’s lives and men rule all women’s lives and Allah rules all lives as they interpret the will of Allah and they who wear the robes and sport the longest of beards with the wild look in their eyes are to be obeyed as they are the ones who control the necks which fall before the executioners axe for the crimes of heresy. Even Kim Jong Un believes his version of Communist enslavement will eventually rule over all that remains of the world after North Korea amasses sufficient numbers of nuclear warheads and the ICBMs with which to deliver them over the entirety of the globe starting with the United States then Europe and on until he is stopped or all else have been vanquished. If you believe that there are none who believe they were chosen by heaven to rule the world you need read no further than the Hamas Charter and founding documents to realize even they believe they have been chosen by Allah to bring Sunni Islam to the world and be those who will be chosen and blessed to be in the catbird’s seat and be the ultimate deciders of everyone’s’ fates. The exact same dream is at the core of Islamic State (formerly ISIS), the Wahabbists, the Muslim Brotherhood, al-Qaeda, Islamic State of Iran, the Saudi Royals and probably countless others some of which would surprise many people including those who thought they knew the person and never suspected they held delusional thoughts that they were destined for world conquest.

 

There are always those who will claim they did not see it coming and will be upset that nobody sounded an alarm or warned of the dangers coming. These people have a long line of predecessors. There were those who claimed that the Norsemen who had boarded their ships and gone a Viking and had already raided the eighth village up the coast and then the seventh and then the sixth and suddenly the village is all up and arguing that the Norsemen gone a Viking would tire before reaching our village and they continued to claim this and even passed laws arresting those who would sew panic by building ramparts and digging ditches to aid in defending from an invasion which these leaders kept claiming would never reach their village as they were a safe distance up the river and that would protect them. These are the same leaders who will be pushing those who had warned and even been locked away for attempting to fortify the village and were released and sent to lead the defense against the men gone a Viking as they disembarked and were heading straight for the village. There was a similar disease called disbelief in the Middle East and eastern Europe claiming that the Mongols would bypass their city as their walls were too thick, too high or that their town held too little treasure or any of a myriad of reasons but when the dead bodies of the plague victim who were still alive when the trebuchet or catapult heaved them over those very same unsurmountable obstacles defending the city and the panic struck with people screaming and crying to those same incompetent leaders to save them and the leaders hid so as not to be thrown out the gates carrying as much of the city’s wealth in a futile attempt to appease the Mongols, but alas that never worked as the Mongols wanted more than the gold and jewels, they wanted the pleasure of conquest, the blood lust of battle, and the prizes won in the pleasures of the terrified women and the subservient men groveling at their feet begging for their lives, they were the first butchered as those who stood caught in their futile attempt to stay the Mongols or who rode out in defiance choosing what could possibly be called a good death as is it not better to die on one’s feet than on one’s knees?

 

The truth is that the leaders rarely see such troubles coming and it is not because they are honestly blind to the threat but because to address such troubles would assure they would be thrown from office and they are accustomed to the comforts for as long as it will last. Leaders are not those who seek challenges except in rare instances such as Churchill who seeing the buildup of the Nazi German war machine knew what lie ahead sooner or later thus he attempted to warn the people and the leaders. Anyone remember what happened to Churchill for all the warnings he attempted to provide? No, not leading Britain during the war but before war became thrush upon an unready British Isles? He was drummed out of office being called a warmonger and an old fool and virtually every other horrific name one could heap upon a man who had simply attempted to warn a people of the coming challenge and steel them for the war that was sure to come, it was only a matter of when and to what degree the Germans would have prepared. When the Germans rolled across the remainder of Czechoslovakia they would still have been easier to defeat than after they swarmed across half of Poland and sealed their eastern border with a treaty with an anxious Stalin who was not prepared for a war with Germany. Churchill’s final verbal fusillade to his noble members of the British Parliament after Chamberlain returned from signing the Munich pact with Herr Hitler which was straight forward, to the point and true as he told them, “You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor and you will have war.” There was far more indelible historical record of a man choosing the path of honor when those around him chose to ignore the threat and whose words are familiar to any student of ancient history or the study of war where the two famous quotes came at the shores of Thermopylae. When the Persian officer stood before the three-hundred Spartans and three to five thousand assorted Greek volunteers and demanded that King Leonidas and his men give up their arms and they would be allowed to live, his reply was simply, he exclaimed disdainfully and grinning without a doubt, “Molon Labe” or, “Come and take them.” Also, when Dienekes, a Spartan soldier, was informed that the “Persians would fire arrows so numerous as to block out the sun,” his reply reflected the bravado of his King stating, “So much the better as then we shall fight our battle in the shade.”

 

Molon Labe When Demanded the Greek Spartans Surrender Their Arms King Leonidas Replied Molo Labe __ Come and Take Them

 

 

In this day there are very few who have the metal or bravado of King Leonidas or Winston Churchill though there are a few and one is also a great friend and supporter of Israel as praises her efforts and survival as being on the front line in the generational clash of civilizations which too many throughout the western world are in complete denial that there be such a problem and the real problem is their leader in the White House. The gentleman in question is retired Lieutenant Colonel and former United States Congressman Allen West who can be heard from his recent Times Square Speech below.

 

After these quotes from some of the bravest of men to have ever lived and after hearing a man who did everything to protect his men in Iraq even to the point where he committed an act that he knew as he did so that it would likely cost him his career if the commanders above him did not stand behind him, they did not. Lieutenant Colonel Allen West commanded the 4th Infantry Division in Iraq where he was losing men to IED (improvised explosive device), which work a lot like mines, at a rate he knew was unsustainable and starting to affect morale. One of the terrorists responsible for these devices and who Lieutenant Colonel Allen West knew had knowledge of where his men would be ambushed with an IED and the location of those making the explosive devices but he refused to respond to his interrogators. Lieutenant Colonel Allen West entered the interrogation tent and ordered everybody out of the tent leaving him alone with the captured terrorist where Allen West decided to try a new form of special interrogation and took his sidearm from its holster and raked a round into the chamber and discharged a round into a sand-bucket used to assure that weapons were not loaded during interrogations. The terrorist decided that he would rather not test Lieutenant Colonel Allen West’s patience further and provided all the information desired. Lieutenant Colonel Allen West returned to his office and called his superior and informed him of his actions. He then calmly briefed his commanders and they devised tactics and actions for the next day. Lieutenant Colonel Allen West in very short order was relinquishing his sidearm and his command and was soon forced from the service after twenty-two years’ service. He will always have the respect of his men and many other patriots and some, myself included, would follow him in an assault on hades if that were necessary. Lieutenant Colonel Allen West was elected to the United States Congress in Florida but when his district was joined into another with the advice of his own party, he lost a clearly rigged primary as he was not what one might call a party man who could be counted upon to vote the party line as he only would vote his conscience, and we cannot have such people in Congress as what might come next, integrity?

 

As any of the heroes from above would have advised, when somebody claims over and over year in and year out that their primary aim is to kill you and destroy your way of life that only fools and politicians refuse to believe their threats. Iran has been chanting for over thirty-five years, “Death to America” and “Death to Israel” and they continue to do so every Friday rain or shine. Despite that the political leaders in too many parties and places claim that these chants are made for domestic consumption and the Ayatollahs would never make good on these threats as they realize that by doing so they would be inviting their nation’s destruction. In all honesty, they will eventually try to make good on these threats and the deal recently reached set the clock ticking down to the inevitable date when they will finally have the ability to fully follow through on these threats. As Lieutenant Colonel Allen West stated, in the near future the deal just made by President Obama will make Iran an economic power and within five to ten years they will become a military power and between ten to fifteen years they will become a nuclear power and beyond that all bets are off and both Israel and the United States will be facing an Iranian monster capable of fulfilling those threats. Does the western world really desire playing Russian Roulette with Iran because if they do, I have news for them, they will be going first and in this game Iran is insisting they use an .45 cal. semi-automatic pistol which makes going first a guaranteed losing proposition. But still there are those in the western world who will be eager to join the Ayatollahs at the table and pick up that weapon and the obvious will result and the Ayatollahs will gladly continue to load one bullet into the .45 cal. semi-automatic pistol and handing it to their adversary from the west and allowing them the privilege of going first. If the leaders are as big the fools as many we have currently, they will gladly oblige. Unfortunately they will be taking all too many of us with them, so choose your votes carefully as your life does depend upon this.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

The World After President Obama

 

There are those amongst my friends and acquaintances who fear that President Obama will declare Martial Law after instigating some false national emergency whose borderline irrational fear mirrors that of those who feared the same from President George W. Bush. There is too much precedent for such to occur and President Obama will step down and give way to the duly elected President in mid-January of 2017 after the 2016 November elections. The question remains what shape will the world present to the next President and what shape will they find the United States presenting them, allowing for actions to steer the United States after their inauguration. The one point that needs to be made is this assessment is made with absolutely no regards from which party or who will be the next President as we can cross that bridge when we reach it. The first thing is the President will face his power on foreign policy will start from a position of actual weakness not felt by the United States since the start of World War II and actually in worse condition than at the end of President Carter or any other. They will be facing a situation where every branch of the military will have had bordering neglect of weapons systems and other vital maintenance with potentially the nuclear deterrent and missile systems in potentially the worst shape with some munitions in such disrepair as to require their destruction and the necessary systems for producing and upgrading these vital assets also teetering on exhausted supplies and neglected condition as to make their management a simple case of dereliction of duty caused by strangled funding and intentional degradation ordered from the highest places. They will find the senior officers to be largely made up of a weakened corps of merely ‘yes men’ and actual pacifists who believe the United States military would best serve the world in the capacity to deliver aid but not necessarily deliver force of arms beyond the shoreline with the exception of utilizing drones and other stand-off weapons partially due to depleted manpower caused by decreased funding and the paring down of the military leadership through neglect to make efforts to retain the officer’s corps.

 

The rebuilding of the military power will take a concerted effort and require massive funding increases which will make any promise of reduction of the tax burden near to impossible to deliver on in the first two years without simply patching some of the most serious areas of military weakness due to nearly eight years of intentional neglect and lack of concerns for the consequences. There will be the need for some of the cancelled military productions and for consideration of developing modern replacement for some of the oldest of the vital systems. The B-52 heavy bombing corps is utilizing airframes mostly built before 1990 and using systems designed originally in the early and mid-1950s and receiving upgrades restricted to that airframe and other limitations due to restrictions resulting from the designs being of antiquated designs and technologies which would require extensive restructuring of the basic airframe which would more likely be better served by replacement of the B-52 fleet with a new long-range bomber designed with forward looking technology. Even the B-1 and B-2 bombers are utilizing old technology and would require a complete overhaul of systems and even design. The Air Force may be better served with considering a completely new strategy where the pilots of fighter squadrons no longer were seated directly in the aircraft but instead flying the fighters from remoted position of a dedicated stealth aircraft where multiple fighters are controlled from relative safe stand-off positions. Such remotely controlled aircraft could retain much of the size of the current airframes which now being remotely controlled the airframes could be designed with intent of making high-G maneuvers previously impossible to execute due to having a pilot onboard the aircraft. Such a fleet utilizing such design parameters would revolutionize air combat for the future in ways thought unimaginable just ten years ago. The same considerations could be utilized in many modern systems when their next redesign is due especially armored combat vehicles using similar control systems allowing for the replacement of crews with automated systems which would permit decreased size and vulnerability of profile while retaining the accuracy and armaments of modern warfare armored systems. Replacing the infantryman with a robotic system is not yet feasible but should be a priority task presented to DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) with an expected rollout of several prototypes each providing the same abilities with additional features possible only in a robotic system. These systems would still require human operators who would make final decisions of when to shoot and when to stand down. It is doubtful that the American population is ready for terminator styled soldiers operating independently reliant solely on advanced AI (artificial intelligence) units quite yet, but even that would be a presentable concept when considering the demands that any military action place risk on the troops minimizing any possibility of human casualties.

 

The stress on military upgrading and rebuilding is simply due to the requirement of a force to back up policy is required if one intends to have a positive position in dealings with other nations or a defensive position which by requirement is overtly careful so as not to provoke anger or rejection knowing that the military is unable to back up and enforce policies and other demands including protection of the homeland and its interests overseas. This is crucial because the next President will be facing difficulties of the United States’ own making across the globe. Europe will be facing economic challenges which will render their policies being ever more defensive and cautious with numerous European nations facing unrest within their borders. The potential for an explosion of bloodshed within the European continent is becoming not only a future threat but approaching transforming into an imminent threat uncontrolled illegal immigration will be approaching the tipping point where the European culture will become challenged which will push the European indigenous population to the point where the decision will be the same as it has been throughout human history when two disparate and opposing cultures reach the point where the minority population decides to attempt, through intimidation and other threats, to impose their norms on the ever shrinking and aging majority replacing their culture and supplanting them as those wielding power going into the future. Should Europe when so challenged react in the fashion which has served them in the past, with such response as often typified be referencing the Inquisitions, the result will be just as or even more horrific. Europe as a whole has a very disturbing history of open warfare between competing positions which were demanding for far lesser changes in the culture causing horrific wars even including civil conflicts within one’s borders. The possibility of similar response today is all too real. One need not look that far afield to bear witness to such results where internal forces rise up and before all is decided, outside forces enter the war hijacking it to forcefully take over the nation wracked already in violence in an attempt to install a new set of leadership just as dictatorial, just as oppressive, just as cruel and potentially even more barbarous than the one being overturned. Such disasters even threaten to redraw the maps casting the formation for the sham and relativity designed solely to enrich foreign investments. Such is what is being fought over and is the main reasoning given by ISIS who is intent on supplanting both the former dictator and those who sought to replace their dictator with a modern system most likely with elected representation resulting in what is oft referred to as a democracy. Should ISIS prove victorious, there will be a new leadership in the form of a Caliph, an old title being restored so as to impose an old dictatorial leadership who takes their claim to the throne based on historic familial relationship to former Caliphs all the way to Muhammad thus adding a religious basis for their power. Such a religious tyranny would be very similar though diametrically opposed to the theocratic dictatorship of Iran, the other eight-hundred-pound gorilla in this struggle. The third leg of this societal struggle would be represented by Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Saeed Hussein Khalil el-Sisi who has yet to be fully defined and is the sole representative desiring to inspire his nation to become the towering example of how an Arab and Muslim state is capable of using elections as the tool for actually choosing the national governance but also guaranteed to be free and open elections even should he be defeated, and then comes the real test as to whether or not the newly elected leader after President Sisi also chooses to continue the liberal march into modernity or chooses to install themselves as the unchallengeable leader of Egypt. Meanwhile, there are three distinct powers currently vying to lead by two of these and the third simply has desires of surviving the current assaults on its existence which has been an active fight since its inception in May of 1948 and has been pressed to remain on the cusp between militaristic power and start-up nation with a thriving economy wishing only to be unleashed by the restraints necessitated by a constant threat of war.

 

The largest challenge looming on the horizon and very possibly to explode before the end of President Obama’s remaining time in office is of his own doing. The potential for the start of a struggle that would forever change the world may have started once President Obama completes his own set goal of bringing Iran back into the world of nations. The manner in which President Obama set out to perform this miracle would have entailed defanging Iran and then inviting them to join the nations of the world with peaceful intentions by Iran. Instead we have a United States President blindly charging forth demanding this will be his legacy, the making of Iran a coequal partner of the Middle East. The one unavoidable fact is that just as Obamacare (Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act) will be his domestic policy legacy; just as, if not more, dreadful will be his foreign policy legacy as Iran becomes a nuclear power which will have established a basic arsenal of deliverable nuclear warheads consisting of minimally a dozen and more likely three to four dozen with at least one third being thermonuclear warheads (hydrogen fusion warheads). This will place Iran well ahead of whatever plans Saudi Arabia may have in place. This announcement may come at any moment all dependent upon the extent and advancement of the Iranian nuclear weapons program. The truth is the world has absolutely no clue as to whether or not Iran already possesses a number of nuclear warheads hidden away from the prying eyes wandering across the skies both orbital and others ground based aircraft. The one truth we do know is that once it becomes obvious that Iran has become a nuclear power, then it will not take numerous other Middle East nations to develop and start building their nuclear weapons arsenals. This new weapons conflict may be solely restrained by the availability of Uranium in any form to be enriched to weapons level of over ninety-percent and then its merging with the rest of the warhead. Below is the list of known nuclear weapons states and an estimate on their numbers of warheads. Once Iran has announced or been determined beyond a reasonable doubt to be armed with nuclear weapons, then the list below will become somewhat obsolete as it is rumored that Saudi Arabia has a standing agreement with Pakistan to purchase approximately one dozen nuclear warheads just so Saudi Arabia will be covered while they acquire and build their own weapons thereafter. One can also expect that Egypt and Turkey would follow suit and develop their own nuclear weapons systems. The breakdown of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, also referred to as the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), will tempt certain other members to choose to opt out and develop their own nuclear weapons. Some nations may decide to develop and build their own nuclear weapons while retaining their place on the NPT committees. Some of the other nations which might decide the time has come to join the nuclear club include Brazil, Venezuela, Argentina, Taiwan and Japan to name a few that came to mind. The nuclear club is perched to become a far larger club of nations where its membership will no longer be the reserved of the very elite but start to resemble another useless body, the United Nations General Assembly which has become a place where the barbarians sit in judgement making decisions that carry no weight behind them beyond the media attention they generate.

1) Russia 7,500
2) United States 7,100
3) France 300
4) China 250
5) United Kingdom 225
6) Pakistan120 (estimated)
7) India 110 (estimated)
8) Israel 80 (estimated)
9) North Korea < 10 (estimated)
10) Iran ??

 

The final stage is China and her continuous efforts to claim the South China Sea and all the islands found within that general area. The problem is there are other nations who claim these islands and who hold claims just as valid. There is a chance of a conflict here though one has to imagine that China is the eight-hundred-pound gorilla of Asia as her size and modernized army with weapons to match and including nuclear weapons. This is the main reason that Japan, Taiwan and even the Philippines might all be slowly reaching the conclusion that if they are to prevent China taking over the islands one after the other inexorably slinking towards their main Isles thus posing an ever growing threat to these Island nations, they are considering that which would have a decade ago been unthinkable, joining the nuclear armed nations so as to have equal threat potential against China. More as an aside than a warning, one must also remember that the most recent Russian madman, Putin, has delusions of reestablishing Greater Russia and now that China and Russia are back on speaking terms, they have been talking of an alliance for sharing technological advances, nuclear technology, weapons research and development. This has an ominous side in that most terrorist groups have either Russia or China at the head of their supply chain. All taken in, we find the nation of the United States with a military that many have pointed to as merely having the strength the United States could project at the very start of World War II, Russia and China ascending, Iran, supported by Russia and China, being handed nuclear weapons and a very large industrial scale systems to construct said weapons from where they will begin to exercise power over the Middle East and perhaps beyond to Central and South America through Venezuela and Cuba being aided by Russia who appears poised to reacquire the lands of Eastern Europe and Central Eurasia, reestablishing the concept of a Greater Russia. Additionally there is China with an ever more capable navy claiming and taking one island after another while claiming all of the South China Sea and threatening to replace America as the preeminent power in the Pacific including the coastal areas in South America and made all the worse as the United States had gifted China with owning the ports at both ends of the Panama Canal even before the turn of the calendar to the twenty-first century.Then Iran has as luck would have it control over the Straits of Hormuz through which almost all of the Middle Eastern oil is transported to the world and is taking control the straits of Bab el Mandeb through their proxy in Yemen, the Houthis, which grants them control over the Suez Canal as this is where the Red Sea enters the Gulf of Aden leading to the Arabian Sea, Indian Ocean and the world thus granting Iran control over one third of the world’s trade and oil while China controls the busiest sea in the South China Sea as well as the second busiest canal in the Panama Canal. How much more change can the world hope to endure?

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Part of the Problem Our War Veterans Face

What will follow is just as much a stab in the dark as anything else. On another front, it is an answer to a question I have heard asked many times and then ignored. That question is why today’s war veterans are having such difficulty when the veterans of World War II came home and appeared to simply return to civilian life. The very first and possibly the biggest single item that the rest of us need to know is that we cannot know how to treat them or address their problems; only they can care for each other. And that is the crux of the difference between the veterans of today’s modern wars and those from World War II. It has everything to do with having time to ramp down from a heighten state of mind and sensory overload to a normal life situation where your life is not dependent on split second decisions which can and do come often with no warning, simply a foreboding if you are fortunate. So, how is it so different now compared with seventy years ago?

Item one is that during World War II the soldiers were not allowed to come home leaving the battlefield ongoing and unresolved. They completed their task and had won their war where today we drop troops into an ongoing war and then send them home with the resolution of their fight unresolved. After World War II the soldiers arrived home to victory parades and the news never talked about an unfinished job, there was resolution and the soldiers were welcomed as heroes. In today’s warfare we send soldiers into the war zone and then pull them out leaving the fighting unresolved. There is no finality and then when they hear the news they are reminded that they left the job unfinished. They also left others, their brothers in arms, close friends who are more than just friends behind still facing the terrors and threats day in and day out. The veterans from World War II did not leave comrades behind still fighting the battles, the war had been won and they had experienced a finality that goes missing today. But it is more than that.

When World War II ended the troops did not return home within hours. They did not leave the battlefield and within twenty-four hours get placed almost instantly back in what we call a normal civilian setting. The World War II veterans went through weeks still in Europe waiting for their transport to be arranged. They were kept with their units and the others with whom they had fought side-by-side with. Then, after weeks at the staging areas they were placed on ships that took an additional number of weeks before reaching their home. They were welcomed by a relieved and honoring citizenry who applauded their accomplishments and welcomed them home. There was the long transit time with their buddies that allowed for them to unwind and to give each other the exact and understanding care they needed. When our veterans come home now some are even transferred to a new unit upon arrival which completely cuts them off from their main source of help. They are dumped into a whole new paradigm without the down-time they need and too often away from those who can best understand and commiserate with their problems and difficulties. That brings us to the next problem, who treats their difficulties.

No doctor and no medication can replace a friend who was there next to you listening. Nothing that comes in a pill bottle or from a new and fresh face can share the emotions, memories, and particulars the same as the others who were there with you. And absolutely nothing can replace time, simply time to deal as a community with the community the shared traumas and scars that warfare places on the mind and soul of a soldier. Psychiatry does not have the base knowledge or depth of understanding to deal in a positive and healthy manner with the reprogramming and deprogramming the soldier needs to experience and the forgiving, sympathy, release of pain, understanding, and so many unspoken intangibles beyond the ability of the uninitiated to understand, needed and necessary to allow the soldier to return to what we call a normal life and society. Perhaps the only ones equipped to handle the situations and possess the specific abilities, knowledge, and solutions are the very same soldiers who they had shared the experiences and counted upon to protect and keep each other alive, trusting lives and honor in shared combat experiences can help one another with the adjustment back to so-called normal life.  Many soldiers will never be able to totally return and will suffer from memories and other difficulties but most are able to reach a position of control and understanding of what is necessary for them to live among and within normative society. We do not do the soldier much help by bringing them home so suddenly and quickly as the fast pace allowed by modern transportation. The World War II veterans had the possibly unintentional good fortune of a long and slow trip home aboard a troop ship with their comrades and fellow veterans and most often with the same unit and people who had fought with them side-by-side. They were allowed the camaraderie that just might have been exactly the treatment they were most in need of receiving. The one thing that is becoming evident, the methods we are currently pursuing and the prescription cure-alls are not working and a new approach is most definitely necessary. For those of us who wish to help, may I suggest one simply cure, try listening and say nothing, just listen and smile remembering that these young soldiers went and did what was required at our bidding and we owe them more than we can ever repay, far more.

Beyond the Cusp