Friday, December 02, 2005

War. What is it good for? Mental Health! (Well, If You Live in BushWorld)

More breathtakingly arrogant, wholly ridiculous, nipcheese Bushist fascist spin here:

From Wounds, Inner Strength
Some Veterans Feel Lives Enlarged by Wartime Suffering


As Hilbert Caesar told his harrowing war story one night recently in the living room of his apartment, he patted the artificial limb sticking from a leg of his business suit. "This, right here," he said, "this is a minor setback."

Eighteen months after Caesar's right leg was mangled by a roadside bomb near Baghdad, and after weeks of coming to terms with what he thought was the end of his life, the former Army staff sergeant believes he has emerged a richer person -- wiser, more compassionate and more appreciative of life. . .

Although the shattering psychological impact of war is well known, experts have become increasingly interested in those who emerge from combat feeling enhanced. Some psychiatrists and psychologists believe that those soldiers have experienced a phenomenon known as "post-traumatic growth," or "adversarial" growth .

Although war left him with a leg of plastic and steel, Caesar, 28, of Silver Spring, appears to be among those who return home with psyche intact and a sense that they are in some mysterious way improved.

"I'm the same person," he said, "but I'm a different person now."

Combat's potential to inflict psychic wounds has been recognized as far back as the ancient Greeks, but so has its ability to exhilarate, intoxicate and instruct those who experience it, experts say."



"Some experts" assert that war is good for you?

Oh, gee, would that be those experts with a financial and political interest in minimizing the damage to troops that Bubble Boy's Iraq War of Choice has done, and continues to do? Ya think?

The new War-Is-Good-For-You is cavalier Bushist Up-Is-Down-ism at its smarmy best: a way of suggesting they're supporting the troops, while actually undermining them.

It's classic Karl Rovery, cueing the War is Good-niks to swarm out of the woodwork, buzzing that PTSD is for pussies, and that if you're mangled and depressed and suicidal after combat, it's your own damn fault.

Not enough testosterone. Get a grip, boy. Get Patton to slap some sense into you.

Say, haven't we been down this road before?

Yuh. We can revisit the recent Bushist attempts to save money by un-diagnosing veterans with PTSD: "Dirty Bush to Vets: First We Maim Your Minds, Then We Dump You." That was a corker of a campaign.

But really, they've outdone themselves this time in their blame-the-victim-ism.

Get it? In the Bush universe, not only is dirty air really clean air, and polluted water quite pristine, deficits really surpluses, but--war doesn't actually suck!

Why, so long as you're macho enough, if war doesn't killya, it makes ya stronger!

Macho men and women. Gggrrrgh!


First the black-heart neo-cons conjure up a war, just to prove they can.

Then their black-heart neo-con war maims troops' minds and bodies.

But then, if troops' suffer--it's their own damn fault! They're weakling swine. Get it?

Wow!

You go, Preznit Toad-Exploder! You create that reality!

You go, guy! Grrgggh!