[ExI] Civilization, Virtue, and Stress

[Mirco Romanato]

Post Futurist ha scritto:

 > Vietnam? so many thousands of ex-'Nam soldiers are in pain;

I think the "psycothic ex-Nam soldier" is a national myth, but it is not
true. It is like the "Resistance liberated Italy" meme sold by the Left 
(Communist - Socialist) with the other meme that the Resistance was only 
from the Left during the WW2.

The rate of mental breakdown in Viet-Nam was much lower than the rate of
mental break-down in Korea, WW2 and WW1. And, pratically the rate
diminished from WW1 to WW2 to Korean and then Viet-Nam was the minium,
until the Iraq and Afghanistan campaign.

What changed? The reporting of the press. The media.
During WW2 they focused on combat, wreaking havok on the enemy and how
much the enemy was evil and stupid and how much your side and the their
allies are good and intelligent and successful.

In these days, a journalist named Michael Yon was dis-embedded from a
unit of UK soldiers. The difference a soldier noted (not difficult) from
Yon (that is a free lance and ex-SOF) and the MSM journalists touring
Afghanistan and staying out of any harm way (usually in they Hotel rooms 
) is they focused on how much the soldier are sad for being away from 
home or how much the want eat mom's apple pie. Yon asked about the 
combats, the combatants, the enemy, the people around, the battles, the 
weapons, etc. And write about these.

 > and who was
 > it Repuglicans ran for potus less than a year ago? a gung ho 'Nam
 > vet-- over 33 years after the war ended.

Not strange, given soldiers are young people, usually.
How many WW2 was elected POTUS? Eisenhower, Kennedy (that lasted a 
couple of days in shark infested waters when his ship was sunked by 
japaneses).

 > The Vietnam war is NOT over.

Not for the Left, for sure.
How many bogus veterans are out there supporting the Left agenda?
How much Viet-Nam is the fundation of their "narratve", their entire
myth system? Without it, they are without something that define them.

 > And we're also in another war. Thousands of casualties stateside.

% of serving and killed

		WW1	WW2	Korea	Viet-Nam	Iraq
Army			2.8%		2.2%		
USMC			3.66%		3.7%		
Navy			1.5%		1.4%		
Air Force		2.5%		0.9%		

The losers had 30+% of dead soldiers (German) at the end of the war.


The US lost soldiers in around the same number lost for Iwo Jima, in a 
much smaller time (days) and from a much smaller pool of people (for 
sure not 130K soldiers). And not much more than the number of people 
killed by al-Qaeda during 11/09/2001 attacks.
The larger losses are due to incidents at home and on the
battlefield. The rate of losses was under 1% annually in the worst
moments of the war in Iraq. Afghanistan is a bit more lethal, but the
number of people there is smaller. Viet-Nam was higher and WW2 and Korea
much higher.

Mirco