The Governments owe every soldier!

Robert Bales, an American soldier, is charged with gunning down 17 Afghan civilians. Nine of these alleged victims, were children.

This case is shocking to say the least and despite the defense council trying to say there is not evidence to link it to him, let's face it, he probably did it.

Having said that, I am not going to argue the merits of this case. What I am going to touch on is a mental disease or condition, that is identified as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). This is a condition of the mind, caused by witnessing or experiencing a stressful event or situation, or a number of these. PTSD can effect people from all races, genders and ages. However, due to space constraints, we are also not going to conduct a clinical study of PTSD nor go into the complexities thereof.

For our purposes, we are going to focus on the military produced PTSD. Some of the first people identified with this Anxiety Disorder were war veterans from the Vietnam war. The symptoms importantly include- Flashbacks of the event(s), nightmares, hyper arousal- resulting in lack of sleep, hyper-vigilance and anger. To be successfully diagnosed with this peachy little disorder, symptoms must last for a month and cause sufficient impairment in social, occupational and other areas of the patient's life. This would also include erratic behavior and mood swings.

From my own experience, when I served in the South African Military forces during the famous 'Border Wars' in South West Africa (now Namibia) and Angola, we were exposed to both extreme situations and extreme sights. In the 'old' South African war era, you had to serve 2 years conscription after you left school, and then annual camps thereafter. Therefor you were repeatedly sent to the front line. It was not fun most of the time. In that time you were exposed to fighting, where your life is placed in danger as well getting the 'privilege' seeing mutilated, injured and dead bodies on both your own side as well as the enemy. Sometimes the horror is surreal. It changes you! We did not realize the effect it may have, if any, in later life.

Ours was not a unique experience though, as there are wars, somewhere on this planet, all of the time. It seems we can build technologically advanced machines that travel to other planets- but we just can't seem to be civilized enough to get on with each other.

Look at the American, British or any other NATO troops. They were exposed to fighting in the gulf war, the Iraq invasion, the ongoing Afghanistan war...many of these guys have returned to the forefront of the action on many occasions and have been through experience after experience. It is easy for the idiots in government to pick fights, because they, nor their families are the ones on the front line. They have no clue what it is like.

Soldiers are human before anything else, and as such, will react differently to different situations. With the human being, we cannot even begin to predict how somebody would act in a certain situation. Under fire, I have seen the most manly men turn into sniveling nerds and on the other side, you find people who you pre-judge as not being the strongest link- who turn out to be cool under fire.
The same goes for the brain. Scientist try to find factors which would make certain people more susceptible to PTSD, but I do believe that one only finds out after the fact.

World wide, governments need to take responsibly for their actions and their armed forces, past and present.
By that I mean, every soldier that is sent to war, is the government's responsibility, and they should share in any negative action that a soldier takes, whether he is still on the front, or at home. Robert Bales is not the first, and will not be the last case of a soldier flipping out and killing people.
The governments, who send the people to fight for a cause of their making, should be the ones who ensure, that these people come out the way they went in.

EVERY single soldier who has been near the front line, has to receive an effective form of counseling and perhaps even therapy before PTSD sets in.  It is too late once the soldier has gone on a killing spree, in the country where he is deployed. It is too late, when the ex soldier sits in the dark, living the past in a series of flashbacks, before blowing his brains out or even taking his family or even half the people at the mall with him. This is the reality the people running the countries do not want to face. They do not want to take this responsibility- although it is their to take.

It is very easy for the governments to send people to fight and then leave the consequences for the person to cope with on his or her return. Once the soldier is out of the service especially, the selfish people running the show, wash their hands off of them. If found guilty, Robert Bales possible death if found guilty of his crimes. Where is the government who sent him to war. Where is the help he needed before he flipped out?

It is time, for the Government of the world, admit blame and accept their responsibility to rehabilitate every single soldier. Yes, this is a big and expensive task, but I do believe it is necessary and it is owed to the men and women who are prepared to die for the ideals of some yellow bellied politicians, who sit far away as their country men  and women are traumatized,damaged and die for causes they may not even support.