You can’t have a war without people getting killed. You kill them. They kill you. But in this modern era of smart bombs that are really not that smart at all, we too often wind up killing our own.
My friend and former therapist, Ed Tick, has a letter to the editor in today’s paper that begins:
David Morris’ March 26 commentary on fratricide summarizes several incidents in both the first and present Iraq wars in which American and coalition ground troops were killed by our own A-10 attack jets. These American deaths due to friendly fire underscore an ignored but persistent problem of modern war.
I have worked with a grunt who was the only survivor when our own forces dropped a bomb on his sleeping squad, a spotter pilot almost shot down by our side, a Gulf War veteran trapped in a firefight in which both the enemy and our own forces tried to destroy him because his tiny position was in the way of their big fight. The pain, outrage and sense of betrayal caused by incidents like these do not disappear over time. These are but a few recent examples from local veterans of a much larger problem endemic to modern warfare.
Ed now works primarily with Veterans who have Post Traumatic Stress. The stories he tells about what this country’s whoring [sic] has put our military men and women through are enough to turn anyone but the most war-mongering into pacifists.
I have never understood why we just don’t send those who want war INTO the war to do the actual fighting. You want it? You should bear the brunt of it.