ptsd

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080527/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/troops_post_traumatic

"He also blamed increased exposure of troops to combat."

I'm confused, how else would troops suffer from shell shock or battle fatigue, or operational exhaustion? Or simply suffer from something as 'common' as PTSD. Combat has been extensively studied in psychology because of the overwhelming range of emotions; boredom, excitement, fear, exhaustion, and in many cases a pervasive openness to sensations and feelings. As though they were not really fully alive until that moment. I can imagine that taken in with the range of negative things that happen, this sandblasting of 'normal' life is not a healthy thing or easy to live with.
Most of the studies conducted after WW2, the last large mobilization of force, showed that after ~90 days of sustained combat men began to break. It was possible for units to continue to fight long past that point when they were organized as a unit, but to expect it was not a wise move.

This was with high intensity warfare, which is very real in some aspects of our more modern wars, but not quite. Guerrilla or counter-insurgency campaigns probably combine both the stressful feeling of combat with routine activity and remove the healthy reward of getting back from the front, even for a week or two, when there is no rear lines to head towards. My concern here is (as usual lately) twofold. One, why didn't they figure out they would have a guerrilla campaign to wage sooner (and adjust forces accordingly to ease the burden on troop deployments, families, etc). For that, it's too late to change what has already built up in the minds of our soldiers. I worry greatly about the trade-offs of civilian command authorities versus a more independent military command. The civilians plainly do not know how to conduct wars and the military plainly does not know how to explain it to them. And 2), since they can do little to ease the burden on present troops, why not either remove some of them to create a reserve (and a place of rest and relative safety), or increase the pay to attract new recruits. If we're willing to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to mercenaries to fight, why not do so with our own people instead and actually follow the rules of war and rules of engagement in the process.

Personally I see many dangers in a story like this. First, that it portrays us and our soldiers as either weak or unable to handle this war (I don't believe we could have handled it under previous stratagem, this has been a slight improvement). This isn't significantly dangerous unless one considers war from a political perspective of the will to resist or fight and removing that resolve or demonstrating it ourselves. Two, it shows we do not really have any functional reserves in a meaningful sense. My understanding of military doctrine is that successful occupations depend on a stable, independent (but cooperative) government. We have cooperative governments, but not generally helpful, independent or stable ones in place. Strictly speaking if an occupation is necessary, it seems to me more likely that either the occupier is preparing a staging ground for further actions or that somebody screwed up in the war planning and failed to note useful diplomatic alternatives (such as the installment of a strong and independent exiled leader, which tends to backfire anyway, so forget I mentioned it). Without any functional reserve to campaign with, I shudder to think who could be contemplating further hostile actions. (True we do still have many air and naval assets uncommitted, but these cannot hold territory, only deny it). And as far as diplomacy went, it's true it was rather pointless with Saddam along. But occupying a country that has had a generation to build up hatred for Americans is probably not the best way to become friends either.

So in other words. .this whole idea was pretty stupid and now we're finally seeing a cost mount up in human terms. Since I'm not in a position to be listened to, my griping doesn't matter before or after the fact. And personally my "military "recommendation would be to continue some level of counter-insurgent campaigns (which amounts to a PR war, something Americans have done poorly at following WW2). Not to withdraw. We created the mess. In hindsight, well the fault is our own (not bush/cheney/rumsfeld/media, ours, we the people), we should clean it up.