Where Are My Warfighters?

 I looked at a YouTube of a former Army Ranger and CIA sniper known as "The Reaper". He seems like a nice fella, but it's a little hard to picture a Ranger sniper in a man who currently has dreadlocks. That's not Government Issue. People change and so do fashions. It doesn't take away from the story as obviously he is long removed from the battlefield, and you get that. YouTube is full of clips of old men retelling their WWII exploits and I'm so glad they are because their history is our history. These are the untold stories of young men who fought in WWII, Korea and now Vietnam, who were lucky to survive Hell on earth to go on in life and live reasonably normal lives, and beome old men.

There is a perception that WWII veterans adjusted easily after post-war combat because they were The Greatest Generation and men were just built better back then before all the woke shit ruined everything, for everybody. Those guys easily adapted from being killing machines to running machines in the factories that made America great in the 1950's. They slept well. 

No, they did not. They just didn't talk about it or seek help for their trauma, I think mostly because there wasn't much help available to them. There certainly wasn't YouTube. Many men were left with their own demons and stories trapped in their own heads. 

Over Memorial Day, I watched "The Best Years of Our Lives", the story of three returning veterans after WWII. Goddamn, what a great film! You want to see a grown Ferrerman cry? That's one of several films that will do it. No wartime experiences for me, but I'm blessed with a curious mind. I can imagine how war might affect a man. That movie was ahead of its time in its telling of the troubles of ordinary soldiers trying to readjust to normalcy after the horrors of combat. War takes boys because of their youth, strength and the malleability of their minds and makes them men. Makes them men in a hurry. Or it kills them.

Yes, they had post-traumatic stress in WWII, but they called it "shell-shocked", and it was often associated with cowardice, I suspect. Every war since time began has stressed out the combatants, but until Vietnam, the men were told to just get over it and move on. Don't cry about it. That's nice work if you can get it, but most humans cannot. Ask yourself if you could

The Reaper struck me as a man who had come to grips with his wartime doings better than most. It was something he had to do, and he was there and there really was no other choice. I think it has always been that way for men in war. Things get real, very quickly. 

But other more current vets don't always seem to be as reflectively melancholy about their own exploits- at least not on YouTube. There is no shortage of warrior bro's on the podcasts these days. Pete Hegseth, the current Secretary of Defense, is like a bro-in-chief over the military. He's a vet, combat, I guess. He romantically asks, "WHERE ARE MY WARFIGHTERS" and is taking steps to eliminate "the woke" from today's military. 

Oh. OK. The "woke" you say. Alright. Could these motherfvckers ever be a little more specific? Could they define "woke", and for extra credit, enlighten us as to why it's such a bad thing?

No, they cannot. They're just following orders, I reckon. Woke = bad.

I've seen a lot of clips of guys from our various Special Forces talking about their war exploits. There seems to be a bit of embellishment in their stories. I liken it to actors going on late-night talk shows and, in wanting to be as entertaining as possible (and asked to come back) might take liberties with their stories. That's entertainment. 

It's also recruiting. These Navy SEAL's go on these podcasts and they are big, tough men telling wild-ass stories of killing folks, most of which are probably pretty true. It's hard to tell. The same thing happens on mafia podcasts, where if you wait a minute, another mobster will be along to tell you the other guy is full of shit. "I'm the real mob guy, and here's my story..." Mob hitman or warfighter, they are selling a story and telling impressionable young men what they need to know if they choose to enter these professions.

It's no secret that a lot of guys join the military to kill, legally. I'm sure they always have. An ex-Green Beret who has his own YT channel bluntly stated that everyone in Special Forces was a "psychopath". Well, maybe he was bragging. I didn't think so. There are Rules of Engagement (ROE) that vary from country to country, but shit happens in the fog of war and men, women and children do get murdered. I bet that Secretary Pete would like to do away with those ROE's. I know he would like to do away with Mayor Pete who served honorably in combat in one of our recent wars but did so as a gay man. That's woke. Can't be doing that, right. 

America isn't Sparta, but that seems to be this maga regime's masturbation fantasy. We are not a 'warrior nation'. We do what we can when called upon to do it and have a pretty good record of that. We prefer these wars to result in peace, not in more podcasts selling the lifestyle and merch.