"You will beget wolves on earth.
"You'll teach them to wag their tails.
"And if, later, you have to pay the price,
"So be it: that will be later."
"You'll teach them to wag their tails.
"And if, later, you have to pay the price,
"So be it: that will be later."
- Soviet poet Galich
James Blake Miller (born July 10, 1984) is an American Iraq War veteran, who served in the United States Marine Corps and was dubbed "the Marlboro Man" / "Marlboro Marine", after an iconic, close-up photograph of his dirt-smeared, battle-weary face, with a cigarette planted in his mouth, was published on the front page of more than 150 American newspapers in 2004.
Because of his struggles with post-traumatic stress disorder, Miller is now separated from his wife and family and currently lives alone. He is unable to discuss certain things that happened in Fallujah, and has joined the Highwaymen, a motorcycle club under constant scrutiny by law enforcement.
Joey only cried with his motorcycle helmet on. Blazing down the road on his Kawasaki with his mind focused solely on the road ahead was the only time he felt safe enough and alone enough to let the pain come through. He had to hide: he was damaged goods in a world professing perfection. He never got more than three hours tumultous sleep before the nightmares jarred him awake in screaming sweat.
"Company leader to Raven!"
The intrusive, demanding calls still echoed in his head even as he raced away on the lonely Nebraska highway. Joey lived in another world now, unseen to unsoiled civilians. Shadows of black demons chased his every step, whispering his crimes of which no human would hear his confession. Everyone offered to help - only because they knew they could not.
Both the warmongers and peacemongers wanted to use him as propaganda. But Joey had had a lifetime of being used. No Arab face could he look again in the eye. Somehow, he knew, they would just know his unforgivable deed. The world could do as it wished now. But Joey had to find his peace before the bell tolled for him.
I came back home. But home wasn't there no more. Did it leave because I left? Or was it never there to begin with? I'll never know now. Sweet Jesus, this is driving me crazy!
First they use you. Then they break you. Then they leave you. I only wanted to know that I served. I should have asked exactly what I was fucking serving. Is too late to even care?
I see some of the other guys still lyin' and dyin'. Still thinkin' they can beat the devil. But that wigglin' worm keeps eatin' you up inside, never leaving you alone, making you wish you was dead.
Nobody's done what I done. Worst ones are the "understandin'" ones. "Oh, I know you're hurting. You can tell me anything!" Fake ass assholes, users. Hanging on me like I'm a broken chair to fix up. Don't be making my problems your problems. Don't be using me for your escape. They only say they want to help because they know they won't.
Some of them other vets have come around too late too. It's all fucking bullshit! Who was there for me when my brain snapped and I couldn't remember why I was pulling that trigger? Not a one of you fuckers! "He's a brave boy. He'll be fine." Fuck you! Fuck you out the goddam ass. You go kill and be fine, motherfucker! Goddam you to HELL!
When he was still scrambling through the brush and dust of Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley, listening to his buddies’ frantic pleas for a medic, Brendan O’Byrne gave no thought to whether he would be able to pay his bills when he returned home to the United States. He did not contemplate his future credit rating, or his ability to land a job.
...Additionally, he was having nightmares. Night after night he got shot, or his gun malfunctioned, or he watched a friend die. The only way to avoid them was to drink until he passed out, so he did, sometimes emptying two bottles of Jack Daniels in a day.
The drinking caused its own problems. He got arrested once for a bar fight, and other times for being “a little bit out of control, drunk, and mad at the world.” He collected unemployment and continued to ignore his bills.
“I have no idea how to catch back up,” he says O’Byrne. “I don’t have any way to figure out how to plan.”
It was as if his body was back at home, but his mind was still in combat, interfering with his ability to strategize during those first few months. “My head is spinning so fast at this point that I try to commit suicide,” O’Byrne says. “I can’t stop my brain from just racing all day. And I’m supposed to worry about this debt? Worry about this car payment?”
It was winter 2008 and the American economy was collapsing. So was O’Byrne.
Only place I'm free from you assholes.
Joey's mind kept shifting gears on him, disengaging one thought as the horror erupted too high, engaging another as it fought its way to the surface, a thousand more behind that crying out to be let out. Joey often needlessly shifted gears on his bike just to mimic his mind, to find any thread of honest communication between him and the outside world.
The more he tried to explain, the less anyone understood.
"Psychological evaluation". Just what the fuck is that supposed to mean? Who are you to evaluate me? Want me to sanitize your motherfucking war for you? Have Susan open her legs for me so she can "serve" and be part of the war game? You pathetic damn people never ask to know the truth. Only as long as I lie you call me friend.
Well, I can't lie no more! You fucking hear me? Pull your head out of your goddam ass!
Why should you listen to me when you won't even listen to you? You got crimes of your own, don't ya Mr. Upright? Maybe you didn't pull the trigger but you got blood on your hands. What was you sayin' when they put Jesus on the cross? "Halle-fuckin-lujah, praise the Lord"? You want to keep your shit down, don't ya? Hide your own sins knowing mine be out in the open. Your dark soul sees my soul, don't it? Yeah buddy, I know how dark souls get made.
You used to fool me with your clean cut neighborhoods and clean cut hair making me think I'm part of it. You sure played me for a sucker. Go fight for us, bitch! Idiot moron. Tote your gun in the shit so I won't have to. You had me fooled alright with your pretty teeth and nice cars. You ain't so goddam pure ya-self.
But that don't help me none. I'm still broke up in a million pieces.
When Walmart rejected O’Byrne, he was stunned.
“Coming out of Afghanistan, leading men in goddamn combat for fifteen months, to being turned down at fucking Walmart, it does something to your ego,” he says. “I wasn’t going for a supervisor role. I wasn’t going for any role. I was going for cleaning floors in the middle of the night. You know, it was such a shock to me that I was turned down for that. And it really, it scared the hell out of me because I thought ‘Oh my god, if I can’t get a job at Walmart, how am I going to get a job anywhere else, and what am I going to do for money?’”
Selling yourself short is a cardinal crime.
At 18, Joey had it all figured out what he wanted to do. First off, he was smarter than the Army. He still revered the institution but he bragged how he had no delusions on their wayward ways. Joey had a plan on the career path he was going to take and the army was going to facilitate that for him no matter what. This was not going to be a one way street, he vowed.
What he didn't count on was a mind permanently scrambled, his life made useless. He'd fought back part of the way but still no light on the horizon of coming home. Joey sat on the edge of the universe, a starless deep abyss dangling below. No matter the time of day, the light dimmed in continual sunset to his eyes. That's what he was racing: to reach the light before it passed away forever.
If I sleep in a comfortable bed, they'll come snatch me out of it, pissed off as hell. I can't get it out of my brain! "Company leader to Raven" cracks the radio in my head. If he's sleepin' good he ain't one of us. He ain't doin' his share. Say anything but don't say I ain't be doin' my share! Oh, Jesus God in heaven you're killing me. I can't get no rest. The rubber band just twists tighter 'n' tighter.
You want me now, assholes? Now that I'm all fucked up. You want me running your shop and hanging around your pretentious little office? You want to put me on display like a trophy? Hire Mr. War Hero to show much you love us "veterans"? And what if I'd never gone, huh? No room at the inn then, huh, you hypocrites.
Same wherever you go. I saw them clubbin' girls so hot you could die. They got eyes that don't know the world, all shiny and new. They ask me to come along. Some cause they love everyone. Some cause they feel guilty they ain't dead like me. Show you like me and you get a free pass on the war guilt, they think. I ain't found no free pass on the guilt no time never on nothin' for one fucking minute. I can't be in your world anymore.
I can't be in anyone's world anymore but my own. But there ain't no livin' there.
I don't want to die. But I guess them people I shot didn't want to die neither, did they? So how can I ask to live? How can I go on eatin' and laughin' when I left all those families crying not knowing why? Was this the plan all along? To make me like this?
Who heals the inner wounds?
On Christmas Eve of 2003, Kevin Lucey noticed the first sign of the "hidden wounds" ravaging his grown son, Jeff.
Jeff Lucey, a 23-year-old Marine lance corporal had been back from Iraq just a few months and was living quietly with his parents in Belchertown, Mass.
That night, Kevin suddenly "took off his dog tags and tossed them at his younger sister, crying," and began "saying he was nothing more than a murderer," the father recalled Thursday.
...The next day, Kevin Lucey found the body of his son in the basement of the house, his neck bound with a garden hose, dangling from the beams in the ceiling.
Next to the body was a shrine with Jeff's dog tags, two dogs tags of Iraqi soldiers his son claimed to have killed, several family photos arranged in a semicircle, a photo of his platoon in the middle and three notes.
"He once again was in my lap as I was cutting him down from the beams," the dad said.
Joey said that first night in the barracks bunk in basic training was the most scared he'd ever been. He'd put his life in the hands of strangers and his instincts told him to run. So much different looking from the inside out! Why didn't he see this before?
His bunkmates were just as alone and afraid, and as such they banded together in mutual trepidation. To hell with the big shots, we'll fight for ourselves, for each other. They weaved a cocoon that sheltered them from the knifing doubts that invaded their nightly dreams. "I can hide in this band of brothers. Nothing else matters."
All this was as the Army intended.
Did they know all along the worm was going to turn? That first I was going to believe, no problem. But that sooner or later I was gonna think and have that moment that changes everything? But then it's too late and you can't go back and you can't ever stop. You gotta keep killin' for your buddies, for your boss's approval cause you lost your own. You gotta keep killin' cause they don't expect anythin' less. Came a time when those bullets shot right through me no matter where I aimed.
I swear I can still feel them in me. "Company leader to Raven." We need more killin' done.
Dear God in heaven what I wouldn't give for just one safe spot to lay my head. With no one to leech off my tears. And no one to poke on my fears. Just put away your long knife for once and let me live. What is it about war that makes everybody make everybody else go do it? Sayin' truth works the same way. If they don't ever start letting me speak it how can I have any hope?
Shit I'm tired but I gotta keep running. Maybe when I get to the next place things will be better. Maybe. Who's going to love me now? I can't stand still with this wiggling worm inside me twisting my guts out. If only I could find a place where I didn't have to lie I wouldn't have to die. That's where peace is. If only someone would speak the truth...
"Sorry, kid, my career is more important than your soul."
“In a psychologist’s room or psychiatrist’s room there’s no connection, because you can’t connect, because that’s not their job to connect,” he says. “Their job is to understand, evaluate, diagnose and treat. But a group of guys that have seen combat, have seen people die -- that’s human, that’s connection, where people can cry and they can start shedding some of this guilt with guys that know what the hell they’re talking about.”
Patton was a "goddamed coward". Anyone can die.
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Darla Carmichael
OS Weekend Fiction Club
rmgosselin
Writer to the Stars
emma peel 2
Mission
Salon.com
Comments
The Medal Of Honor.
After the bestowing of the Blue and white ribbon, and Meal around John Baca's head/neck . . . .
A military escort took my Parents, youngest sister, Baca and me to a French Fancy Eatery.
Henry was eating there with a Miss Ford. The bombs never dropped in Viet'Nam on those French Rubber Tree Plantations. (Rubber Tree honey taste as Great as Eastern Shore's Lima Bean Honey.
Honest)
I never had a clue that the shuttles to France and Hanoi were because the global Crooked Killers had their HUBRIS-GREEDY eyeballs?
On filthy!
Oy lucre!
O Shame!
The dioxin killed the mahogany etc., trees, lizards, tropical orchids, insects and:
Humans too.
Years Later -
I saw a New York Times Front Page expose Ref:`Viet' Nam's virgin timber. It was sold.
It was a global scheme.
Kissinger is the `Evil Incarnate.
I saw him slumped over a plate.
Henry Kissinger never said "hi."
Etcetera/You know who you is!
If I knew what I know too late?
I might spit in his T- bone steak!
I can stillseehis chubby backside.
He's no backbone or uprightness.
`
He had his back to our post-White House Visit. I have thoughts ref: Military Medals. Post Death? Oy,
'with all due respect' they` dust.
Angels don't even dust them off.
The wings could easily dust them.
Higher Spirits discern they lure.
General cover the empty breast.
Generals lure youth to die in war.
Wall Street does proxy murders.
------
on/on. Thanks. The Washington Post on Sunday, August 21st had a interesting Front Page article.
Author; Greg Jaffe.
It's about many returning PTSD vets. The article begins with a Triple amputee veteran.
Sgt Anthony Vierra, lost both legs, and part of his right hip. He stepped on a Mine that Rumsfeld/Cheney/Bush never guarded. The Pentagon etc., used pneumatic pumps to pilfer Gold from the Museums.
We (arms merchants) sold those land-minds - The 155- artillery rounds that ...
Are USA made.
Matell Toy sells:
M- 16's black stock.
The stock is plastic.
M-16's are global.
`
Google the Wash/Post?
Thereis much there.
It's worth the time.
We need to be a`
Informed citizen.
It's melancholy.
There are photos.
It's enough to make:
a grown human cry
.
Art, that's a posting unto itself. Truly.
sky, every damaged soldier makes the world better how? Ow, indeed.
Jack, I can't live with what I've done either. It's about choosing between healing or judging and which one will bring us home.
Yes. Some kill their self from moral guilt.
True.
Some?
For Example:
A Good Medic?
Look up Medic.
Look at roots.
Do Word Study.
`
A medic may not be able to turn of the Psychic DVD. Booze etc. won't serve as a cure.
The Liver gets mushy.
GI may pee red blood.
Pain reaches maximum.
The decision is complex.
`
I use an analogy sometimes.
Soma-Body synapses are so:
altered. Whacked. It's Pain.
analogy?
Stick a body appendage in a 220.
Put your?
Pinky?
Tongue.
Stick 'it' gently into a 220 watt - volt.
Use a home 220 female socket. Ouch!
The experience is unspeakable. Visit?
If you judge you can experience War.
War isn't the same thrill as a Sr. Prom.
`
Wear a medal and get shot in the heart.
No.
I am just yearning to find proper words.
P.S.
Dick?
He (Chene hires scribes to think like you.
He takes the same view. Take anti-PTSD?
They give pills that kill long after a` War.
Liz Cheney was a Ghostwriter for `Dick.
He wants the VAMC to not honor PTSD.
Warmonger cloak self-loath that we See.
Overshadowing a murderous heart dies.
No Proxy kill.
If you do shoot quail/pheasant? Birds?
Peasants too....
People too . . . .
Then have the courage/heart to eat it.
No stick a peep,
as in penis in a
Wall Street male
220- plug socket.
No stick in dryer.
Hang sheets in sun.
Use sunshine to dry.
These wars are bloody.
Go experience the wars.
War eventually kills you.
Patience
Patient
No be a walking dead.
Numb folk are carrion.
No kill human beings.
Brother
And Art James could indeed post his comments as a stand-alone.
After I get over being sick to my stomach at the thoughts I get reading this...
Lefty, it really is a systemic process, treating people like hunks of meat, not really concerning ourselves as to the outcome. At least Kissinger was honest with his malevolence.
grif, there's a time for everything and I think knowing both sides makes the other a richer experience.
Mary, thank you very much! I see this and live this every day. Knowing I communicated helps.
Algis, bringing this trip to light was my goal.
Ralph, exactly! And thanks for coming by. Reminds me you got one of your hiking posts up I want to go visit.
Art, sic 'em!
his life made useless.
He'd fought back part of the way but still
no light on the horizon of coming home.
Joey sat on the edge of the universe,
a starless deep abyss dangling below"
Well then! From the king of the Abyss, these words:
You are where you were destined to be.
Every Human must meet the Abyss.
The half-beasts with human demeanor & anatomy
will struggle to avoid this very confrontation
all their lives, and will die unredeemed.
Redemption is mighty important.
The Abyss is a friendly place.
It will grab you and tear you to pieces and then
you will wake up wiser.
Sure, they got what is coming to them, the half-beasts.
But: should we as Humans waste precious energy
in our fury and revenge?
Well, only 25 percent of the time. best i can muster..ha
Old Men...
And Women...
You Are Winning...
Go Gentle Into The Night...
Don't Let The Youth Trouble You...
They Much Prefer To Kill Themselves...
no
please
don't move
is the wine properly chilled?
more meat on the BBQ?
and your slippers...
II, we serve our soldiers with Worcestershire.
at the black hole of your personal cosmos,
feared for her empty appearance,
but the fate of any wise man
wishing to navigate the Dark Night of the Soul
to the other side.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
“There are many things the human body and psyche were never meant to withstand, and how can we expect it to?’’
The homeless & mentally “disturbed”/”disordered’/delicate
ar e like pioneers in the Inner Space of Despicable Pain,
they will survive despite
not having any solicitude except the soulfully granted kind. Once in awhile.
But look: it aint as grim as it seems. America is coming around, slowly, slowly…
You and I disagree on how to make Uncle Sam notice the problem.
I have tried vitriol, I have attempted guerilla attacks on somnambulistic smugness,
And …nothing. Argh. So now I am a nicey nice guy. A lion in sheep’s clothing.
A part of the herd.
A bit of a bigmouth, but always a gentleman.
That is the only way to beat this plague: smiley faced ironic realism.
Some of em will get it..
Or: am I a dreamer, a coward?
but it's the only one i got":
the inherent goodness of homo sapiens sapiens.
mama lou, if only this weren't such a personal experience.
is realer than one in sunlight hours, sure,
but so what?
Dreams...
I usually dream i am omnipotent, omnipresent, etc,
at least for awhile, a short stretch of
terror or pleasure-filled time.
then i wake up and gotta lug this flesh around
to appointments and assignations, and whatnot.
anyway, i get you.
anything out of mr roarke's misshapen mouth is shit to live by.
james, maybe there's a little of both in all of us.
capn, very glad this spoke to you. I wanted it to be a universal thing.
Why the hell isn't this an EP and on the cover? Hello????
Brilliant, Harry! Thank you. My uncle used to refer to Patton, was it, as "Old Blood & Guts", with the codicil, "Yeah, OUR blood, his guts!"
libby
I did a blog at corrente about Obama's 5/22/10 West Point speech (bleecccccchhhhh). Here are some excerpts. Sorry, for so long a comment, but I think you will appreciate the sensibility:
"If you think the new world order Obama alluded to in his 5-22-10 9th-crop-of-cadets-as-MidEast-cannon fodder-for-the-new-world-order-(hegemony)-killing-fields speech at West Point this past Saturday has any remote benefits for those of us not in the top 1% of global income holders, there is an oil well in the Gulf I’d like to sell you."
"By the way, there was a group of about 100 protesters up at West Point organized by Debra Sweet's The World Can't Wait organization. A respectable number, and I am grateful for their commitment. But a very tiny number when you consider that most of the 80 million Americans who voted in Barack Obama made it abundantly clear their number one priority was for him to end the illegal and ferocious wars in the Middle East. Within his first year he has earnestly escalated the troop numbers, the scope of the wars, the use of ultra-violent weaponry, the casualty counts and the Pentagon's mind-numbing budgets in this time of economic crisis. There is something seriously -- terrifyingly -- wrong with our profound passivity as citizens. The passivity of all but a relatively small handful of continually committed resisters. We are, like it or not, the proverbial "good Germans." I always wondered how the Holocaust could have occurred. I have my answer in these United States."
"As for Obama's speech, in literary terms it seemed of very poor quality. Maybe Barack's selling his soul for career, power, control, approval of those corporate and military daddies, etc. is drying up his creativity. On the other hand, maybe the speech's shallow, cliché-ridden rhetoric was deliberate and manipulative. Maybe sending those trustingly naive and/or desperate for money and/or an education kids -- young officers -- into certain, unfathomable hell to become definitely psychologically -- maybe physically -- maimed or even killed while at the same time using them to definitely psychologically – maybe physically – maim or even kill fellow human beings -- deserves a really “drone-numbing” (pun intended) level cadence for the jingoistic hypocrisy of evil. Leave it to Obama to find the perfect, tone deaf notes. (I guess that isn’t really fair of me. I didn’t listen to him give the speech. I read the transcript. I find I am just as repelled now watching Obama lie to America with his faux-amiability and stylish rhetoric as I was watching Bush’s smirky, I’m-every-bit-the-idiot-most-of-you-are crony routine.)"
"Maybe in delivering a global “new world order” message, it is best to keep it vague so those in desperate denial on behalf of this new president will do serious positive spinning for him, lay out justifications or noble intentions, or at least abort any dialogues with his non-believers to the left with the ever popular “at least he is not as bad as Bush” declaration. (When we all know you can clear that bar without moving.)"
snip
"The acreage of killing fields is spreading exponentially. International law, habeas corpus, the Geneva convention, Miranda rights seem to be as quaint and outmoded to Obama’s crew as they were to Bush’s. Obama's cherry-picking relativism regarding the law -- sometimes he respects it, other times not so much – is stunning. Executive hubris gone amok. Obama's astonishing assumption of the right to assassinate an American citizen without due process. Again, the profound lack of outrage and attention among Congress, the media and the citizenry over this. And of course, the continuation of the military killing machine. As Chris Hedges has said, our main way of communication as a nation is through violence, though our leaders give occasional lip service only to winning “hearts and minds.”"
"The Wikileaks’ video of the Iraq 'copter troops in 2007 cavalierly “shooting fish [Iraqi civilians] in a video-screen barrel” showed the degree of how morally and psychologically broken some of our soldiers are as well as a military system that tolerates, ignores and/or even encourages such war crimes. This is one more reason why there is such intense revenge radicalization among the citizenry of the countries we have illegally invaded. Debra Sweet declares that one can access hundreds of such recorded atrocities on the internet, proving it is not a case of a "few bad apples." There seems no longer any serious rules of engagement. Ray McGovern recently pointed out a desensitizing training mantra used at boot camps is "Shoot 'em all, let God sort 'em out!""
"The desensitizing indoctrination training, hyper-macho military group think, cult-like demands for obedience, trauma of eye-witness violence and devastation, sustained survival paranoia, along with multiple deployments are all contributing factors to a massive number of war atrocities perpetrated by many of the troops on civilians."
"Another disturbing revelation from Frontline in its recent documentary, The Wounded Platoon, was the large scale, clearly inappropriate "official" use in combat of anti-PTSD medication. These along with the troops resorting to self-medications -- illegal drugs or alcohol -- were contributing to further violent amoral behaviors against civilians as well as suicides and extreme mental stress and breakdowns among the troops. Feeding soldiers all sorts of psychotropic drugs and sleeping pills to keep them even more dysfunctional “functional” war machines seems a war crime in itself."
"Frontline also reveals that the trigger-happy, video gaming atrocities perpetrated by some, apparently many, of our troops in the victim states of Iraq and Afghanistan mean and will mean more crime and violence when these troops return home permanently or temporarily. Frontline focused on the horrifying crime wave and addiction statistics from Colorado Springs near Ft. Carson. This tragic phenomenon is predictable, that some troops would behave with the same reckless, life-is-cheap, killer abandon state side. In fact, in the documentary some troops discovered that their homecoming repetitions of crazed amorality -- excused and minimized amidst their heralded bold “battlefield” behaviors -- had them facing down decades’ long prison sentences. WTF??? They had just so recently “enjoyed” a free range, license to kill (especially “rag heads”, “sand n*ggers", "hodgies", so nick-named by many in the military) back in the Middle East. Clearly from Frontline's attempts at interviews with the brass, the army pretty much disavows responsibility for this post-combat phenomenon. What a surprise. What bullshit."
"Frontline also reveals cases when PTSD releases from combat were denied, when recruits with criminal backgrounds and/or pending charges were allowed to join up because the military was so desperate to add boots on the ground."
snip
And yet, there is Obama enabling the ferocious inertia of the corporate-agenda, killing machine military to stay in motion. And we oblige, with our ferocious inertia to stay at rest. Our inertia from what? Are we so traumatized, we the incrementally boiled frog citizenry? So many fresh hells daily it makes us stay politically inert? Are we so narcissistic? Amoral? Where is our G-D will to resist? Fascism rising!!!
snip
"I am most bitter about myself. About my own slowness to fully acknowledge , experientially, what a war criminal nation I am a citizen of. Yes, I may be politically disenfranchised, but nevertheless, I am one of the 80 million who turned to Obama to, among other humane things, end these illegal atrocity-ridden wars. Who hoped Obama could help America find “redemption.” Lead her back to some semblance of a values-possessing, humanitarian, freedom-respecting society. We got punked, royally. But I watch so many of my progressive brothers and sisters opt to plunge their heads back into the sand, with feeble “Obama as the lesser of two evils” or "he's got a lot on his plate" apologies."
It's a long blog,
http://correntewire.com/obama_west_point_5_22_10_“killing_fields_not_strawberry_forever”_part_1