Saturday, August 20, 2005

Dealing with unnecessary casualties in Iraq

We have a lot of F15s not being used right now. We could establish an exclusion zone for 10 miles inside Iraq on the Syrian and Iranian borders. Anything coming in, or potentially there, other than if we should establish convoys, would be subject to interdiction, i.e. strafing and bombing, by the F15s. Current residents could be offered relocation or we could rent the land. We are provoked, challenged by Hezbollah, meaning Iran, which gave them 'shaped charges', blowing up the AAV on which were our best Marines, the snipers. We are being blamed as occupiers. As an Irish friend says, 'If your going to blamed for stealing a lamb, you might as well take the sheep.' This would be a response appropriate to the provocation and would not be then appropriate, say, for the Mexican border. Cindy Sheehan should be asking for this, not adopting an attitude which is a subject for psychoanalysis where Symbol, Dream, and Psychosis. (His Psychoanalytic series, v. 3), by Robert Fliess, p. 139, might be helpful.

This is related to what I learned from veterans. You can in war, as in development, erogenize your guilt and see destruction of yourself or your proper aim as appropriate or you can look into yourself, perhaps with the help of others, and find your proper aim and find a way to retain intiative in your mission. In part this is why the first part of our soldier's creed is 'Duty, Honor.' Accepting these aims helps avoid erogenizing guilt with its destructive consequences and, at the same time, accepts the control of conscience.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Talking about psychosis.... you may find this interesting:

http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_7267.shtml

Also, I think an interesting subject for psychoanalytical research would be the behaviour of masses of people who privilege blind loyalty and 'faith' over facts and even turn one eye blind over deception.

Joe
human-too-human.motime.com