Think yourself: Could Hamas really have the capability of producing reliable statistics about the gaza population after month of being bombarded?
Was in OIF. Got mortared, ied’d, and/or shot at nearly every day. Finance nerds still went to work. MI still disseminated no intelligence at all. Marines wrote offensive things and about my mother in very visible places I could not access. In 2003, our csh still kept digital records - on computers and laptops. Everyone did their jobs without any hesitation or meaningful difficulty at all. We all used to be civilians. Everyone has a threshold for the limits of adaptation, but most of us are capable of adapting to war, unfortunately though it may be. I realize that the impression our culture cultivates about war is a guy clutching his knees, weeping, and rocking back and forth while the planet fragments around him - and occasionally that does happen - but esprit de corps tends to motivate people into adaptation. It was my experience that the children in Iraq could follow my leadership and guidance better than their parents. They could also tolerate the terror better. They also had better senses of humor. They could also speak better English. I was an army guy but I still have a hunch that this had something to do with it. So be careful of the narrow perspective that organizational behaviors could only function effectively or reliably when sequestered within utopian sanctuary. People can do amazing things.
There’s also the fun fact that despite similar bombings, the death toll seems to have stopped going up after Israel did their best to destroy every major hospital and health infrastructure in the country. It’s entirely possible they’ve lost the ability to effectively count the dead and this isn’t the current number, it’s the last known good number. A country not being able to count it’s dead in a war should only happen because the other side is controlling the hospitals and thus responsible for those reports. So yeah, the next time someone questions if they can even count the dead remind them of Israel repeatedly targeting their healthcare system.
Yeah, that’s the part that keeps me up at night - the knowing or not of the unknown dead. I know that not everyone that dies from war dies neatly and at the war. And I know that we were only able to account for a body if it was present and discernable. So I don’t know if the estimates are correct or not. But I’m in therapy either way. Mental health is stupid.
Well I do want you to know you’re not alone, I’m in therapy too. I was in the 101st for OIF 1. And yeah this shit is distressing. For me it’s the people blithely excusing war crimes we bent over backwards to keep from committing.
Fuck me. See? This is why I stay my ass out of the VFW. The last thing I need is a shared experience. 😂 We wear the same patch on our right shoulder battle.
And you’re spot on. I think it was a hard thing to rationalize that we went there to help. I mean, “we” thought we were helping. I still don’t know. Either way, you deserve self-empathy friend. Also ketamine. It helped me a lot! 😄
Good on you for making it through the last two decades too! I would gander that we have all gone through some degree of self destruction, and I know some more than others. Keep your chin up and your head down. Don’t drink and drive and if you swim take a buddy.
At least in the VFW I can use my worst coping mechanism. But yeah, the one consolation I think our generation gets is that we really did remove a murderous sociopath from running the place. Everything else is murky but that’s a shiny bit. You keep your head up too.
Was in OIF. Got mortared, ied’d, and/or shot at nearly every day. Finance nerds still went to work. MI still disseminated no intelligence at all. Marines wrote offensive things and about my mother in very visible places I could not access. In 2003, our csh still kept digital records - on computers and laptops. Everyone did their jobs without any hesitation or meaningful difficulty at all. We all used to be civilians. Everyone has a threshold for the limits of adaptation, but most of us are capable of adapting to war, unfortunately though it may be. I realize that the impression our culture cultivates about war is a guy clutching his knees, weeping, and rocking back and forth while the planet fragments around him - and occasionally that does happen - but esprit de corps tends to motivate people into adaptation. It was my experience that the children in Iraq could follow my leadership and guidance better than their parents. They could also tolerate the terror better. They also had better senses of humor. They could also speak better English. I was an army guy but I still have a hunch that this had something to do with it. So be careful of the narrow perspective that organizational behaviors could only function effectively or reliably when sequestered within utopian sanctuary. People can do amazing things.
There’s also the fun fact that despite similar bombings, the death toll seems to have stopped going up after Israel did their best to destroy every major hospital and health infrastructure in the country. It’s entirely possible they’ve lost the ability to effectively count the dead and this isn’t the current number, it’s the last known good number. A country not being able to count it’s dead in a war should only happen because the other side is controlling the hospitals and thus responsible for those reports. So yeah, the next time someone questions if they can even count the dead remind them of Israel repeatedly targeting their healthcare system.
Yeah, that’s the part that keeps me up at night - the knowing or not of the unknown dead. I know that not everyone that dies from war dies neatly and at the war. And I know that we were only able to account for a body if it was present and discernable. So I don’t know if the estimates are correct or not. But I’m in therapy either way. Mental health is stupid.
Well I do want you to know you’re not alone, I’m in therapy too. I was in the 101st for OIF 1. And yeah this shit is distressing. For me it’s the people blithely excusing war crimes we bent over backwards to keep from committing.
Fuck me. See? This is why I stay my ass out of the VFW. The last thing I need is a shared experience. 😂 We wear the same patch on our right shoulder battle.
And you’re spot on. I think it was a hard thing to rationalize that we went there to help. I mean, “we” thought we were helping. I still don’t know. Either way, you deserve self-empathy friend. Also ketamine. It helped me a lot! 😄
Good on you for making it through the last two decades too! I would gander that we have all gone through some degree of self destruction, and I know some more than others. Keep your chin up and your head down. Don’t drink and drive and if you swim take a buddy.
At least in the VFW I can use my worst coping mechanism. But yeah, the one consolation I think our generation gets is that we really did remove a murderous sociopath from running the place. Everything else is murky but that’s a shiny bit. You keep your head up too.
A recent study publish in the Lancet - a medical journal - estimated the deaths in Palestine to already be over 180k.
This was a few months ago.