There is a reason military defection and suicides are at an all-time high. No, it is not tour durations, although it doesn't help anyone's morale to be redeployed over and over to a foreign wasteland.
The reason is far more basic. Our soldiers are not being entirely successful in turning their consciences over to their sergeants. Just like in Vietnam, thousands of innocent lives are being disrupted and ended in a war whose beginnings were contrived in a web of lies by madmen like Cheney and Rumsfeld.
Men of good conscience have questions.
Once a soldier sees in an upfront and personal way the damage and destruction of war some soul searching is inevitable. If a soldier ends up personally responsible for the deaths of women, children, and other noncombatant casualties, what residue of conscience that remains intact and wasn't completely replaced with the "just following orders" mindset begins like acid to erode and corrode the soul. Vitally important questions like “why are we really here and doing this?” slip around the official blarney smokescreen and into your consciousness. Seeing the fear and helplessness in the eyes of rural peasants, whose lives are being turned upside down and ended for reasons which can't make sense to any sane person, works in the soul like leukemia in blood.
And it should. The taking of someone's life is as personal as it gets in life. If you are not absolutely truly positively beyond a shadow of a doubt certain that ending someone's existence is necessary, you should not do it; possibly not even then. You can not in clear conscience, years later as you replay the scene over and over in your mind, ease your sense of guilt by telling yourself, "I was just following orders."
When you face your maker, I can guarantee you your sergeant will not be standing by to take your rap for you.
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