By George Marlowe
Last Thursday, the US Army asked its followers in a tweet, “How has serving impacted you?” It was meant to be a routine Twitter post ahead of Memorial Day to draw responses which would glorify the United States Army and veterans who served as cannon fodder for the military. It did not go as planned and backfired spectacularly.
More than 10,000 people replied in response with an outpouring of antiwar sentiments detailing the horrors, crimes and ravages of war. Many of the comments are harrowing stories of lives completely undone, a portrait of an entire population scarred and destroyed by US militarism at home and abroad.
“Your impact is that you’re a death cult,” San declared bluntly on the US war machine in a typical response.
Suicides, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), nightmares, depression, bipolar disorders, anxiety, alcoholism, drug addictions, eruptions of violence, sexual assault, marital breakdown, health issues from exposure to chemical weapons like Agent Orange, failures of the Veterans Administration, families and friends wrecked over multiple generations, and worse are some of the thousands of devastating stories detailed in these replies.
“Many of us are a shell of who we were before,” said one military veteran.
Shane spoke of veteran suicides and unending military deployments. “My best friend from high school,” he said, “was denied his mental health treatment and forced to return to a third tour in Iraq, despite having such deep trauma that he could barely function. He took a handful of sleeping pills and shot himself in the head two weeks before deploying.”
“I didn’t serve but my brother did,” Penny noted, recounting the tragedy that befell her family as a result. “He never went to war but still shot himself in the head. He was the sweetest most tender person I’ll ever know and the US Army ruined him.”
Veterans continue to kill themselves at alarming levels in the United States. More than 52 percent of military suicides occur among US Army veterans. A Veterans Administration study from 2016 showed that approximately 20 veterans die every day, or one every hour or so. According to the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA), more than 5,500 veterans killed themselves in 2018.
Alice spoke of the generational traumas felt by the scars of past wars going back to World War II. “My grandfather fought in Burma with the U.S. Army in WWII,” Alice wrote. “He lived a long life and had 7 children. But as he got older the nightmares came. It broke my heart to hear him tell me with tears in his eyes that he was dreaming every night of all he had seen.”
Chanda spoke of similar traumas affecting whole families. “My uncle was US Airforce,” she said, “and he came home with PTSD that went untreated for almost 50 years and had an impact on his ability to be the family man he needed to be. Now, he’s suffering serious physical side effects from agent orange exposure. It’s affected my whole family.”
“The real take away,” Brett remarked on the Army’s tweet, “for the social media/marketing folks whose brilliant idea this was should be to stop selling and glorifying military service to underprivileged 18-year-olds while covering up the consequences and side effects.”
Another commentator declared, “Soldiers are not your money-bought pawns. They are not random collateral. They are family. They are friends. Our mothers and fathers. Our sisters and brothers. Our aunts, uncles, and cousins. They are more than a serial number. Even if they don’t lose their lives, they lose themselves.”
“The US Army takes advantage of those stuck in unfortunate circumstances,” said another, “while the elite continue to profit off their ‘service’ and reap their benefits. My heart breaks for every veteran in this thread brave enough to speak their painful truths of this dystopian cult.”
The pervasiveness of antiwar sentiment is detailed in comments like the following as well: “My grandfather was drafted from Puerto Rico against his will and taken to Korea to fight a war for the USA and when he didn’t want to kill people that didn’t do anything to him he was thrown in jail” […]
via US ARMY Asks Stupid Question On Memorial Day…Gets Uniform Response of Shared Guilt and Regrets
The Most Revolutionary Act 
My “Like” was not what I read but for the fact that you published those facts contained in it. If terrorists killed twenty people a day the country would freak out and demand urgent action. It is so sad, that the veterans had been destroyed mentally so that did not want to live any longer. And for what? not for the defence of their country against a foreign invader but to further the interests of the people who enrich themselves anyway it goes.
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Thanks for your most insightful comment, Berlioz. The reason I reposted the article was because I previously believed that most military veterans were totally brainwashed by the training they received. I was really happy to be proven wrong.
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I have never served in the military but I can imagine the mental truama and anguish upon the realisation that i was a thug for profiteers. I was not the noble warrior I was led to believe. I was an order follower doing the bidding of psycpaths and criminals.
It is traumatic enough to realise the deceits of western life but to be an active enforcer of that deceit and oppression? How would i cope? What would I do?
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I wouldn’t cope, ebolainfo, that’s for sure. I’ve read studies about draftees in WWI and WWII and how when they were forced to fire their weapons they would aim high to avoid killing anyone. Since that the US military has been trying to remedy this by subjecting military trainees to the most abusive and traumatizing training imaginable – to the point that many never successfully return to civilian life.
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