PTSD

Estimates that as many as 52,000 of the troops returning from Iraq may suffer PTSD (reference Veterans for America website). Regardless of the number, there is no doubt that many soldiers suffer from this condition.

Recent NPR reports from Daniel Zwerdling brought to light conditions at Ft. Carson Colorado, where soldiers that had PTSD were being denied treatment and harassed and mistreated if they admitted to having a problem.

One soldier fought back and won a courtmartial case they were bringing against him, and in the process, started helping other veterans that were afflicted and persecuted by the Army. He is now working for Veterans for America in Denver and his name is Andrew Pogany.

Everyone remembers the scene from the movie Patton, supposedly based on a true story, where a shell shocked soldier is slapped around by General Patton and called a coward because he wasn't really wounded. This famous example is typical of how people feel about the disease, even those that suffer through it. Certainly, the thought that men's minds can erode or snap under the pressure of combat is a terrifying thought to military strategists, trainers, and commanders. How are we to successfully conduct a war if the process disrupts the abilities of the main tool we use to fight, the soldier? In war, we use equipment and plan for the certainty that it will eventually wear out and break through repeated use without any maintenance, yet we don't treat our soldiers as if they are capable of wearing out or breaking. My analogy is ironic, because I am proposing to treat soldiers more humanely by treating them more like machines.

I was listening to a podcast about a University of Lubeck (Germany) experiment where slow wave oscillations were put into subjects heads through electrodes as they fell asleep. These waves simulate the natural waves that people's brains generate as they fall asleep. Researchers speculate that this is an indicator, or the evidence of the way the brain consolidates the activities of the day into long term memory. Many scientists have questioned the purpose of sleep, and a few have theorized that this is when the brain organizes itself and maintains its health. A recent study of a family group with an affliction robbing them of sleep showed that increasingly erratic behavior, memory problems, and eventually death resulted from a prolonged loss of sleep.

I think that this is part of combat induced PTSD. I speculate that a combination of lack of sleep, high degrees of stress from extreme survival instinct, and having to deal with a situation that is just incompatible, contradictory, and intractable would imbalance most people's minds. I believe that the sleep disruption is interrupting the proper integration of soldier's memories and thoughts into their minds. When they do sleep, the hair trigger they acquire to assist with their survival is disrupting their sleep patterns. They have a huge load of mental material to process. They think they are doing their patriotic duty for a country that doesn't appreciate them, and doesn't want them there. They are told they are in the country to help the people that are trying to kill them. They go out to do missions each day, which they cannot refuse, because they are in the military, and their instincts are telling them that this is dangerous and stupid and they should not go out there into the danger, but their sense of duty gives them no choice. They watch friends die and wonder if there is any point in their sacrifice. They listen to their training briefings about how the enemy will attack them, then they see that their threat is everywhere, or the enemy changes tactics. They are in a no-win situation. Does anyone think that a sane person can endure an insane situation long without being infected by it?

Those that come back and do seek and get help for PTSD are taught about their triggers. These triggers are sounds, smells, sights, or some kind of stimuli that puts them back in the mental situation of their distress. They often can't sleep and self medicate to escape the continued stress. Some describe feeling as if the bad situations they endured in combat will not quit happening in their mind. They keep replaying and repeating, keeping the stressors fresh in their mind. One form of treatment exposes the soldiers to their triggers in a safe environment, being told over and over that the environment is safe. Eventually, they can dismantle or decrease their own triggers. Therapy alone has helped many PTSD sufferers get some relief from their condition. Others benefit from time, which seems to erode the condition down to a less severe level. Some never really get better, and many commit suicide.

I believe that the slow wave oscillation inducer could be used in conjunction with therapy to help cure the condition. I think that the brain gets off track and cannot get back to the point where it can incorporate what is happening. With some external reinforcement, perhaps the restful, restoring sleep can be reinitiated and the soldier can begin to assimilate the things that happened and understand and accept them.

Perhaps this therapy could be used in the field. Once a soldier is removed from danger and provided adequate security during sleep, these devices could be made available to the soldier. If the use of externally boosted slow wave oscillators improves memory, as the studies indicate, it could have an additional benefit. Besides not allowing the sleep patterns to become disrupted in the first place, it could help soldiers remember and assimilate the things that happened during the day. If the mind works on the problems of the dangers it faces during the waking hours while it sleeps, perhaps the solutions of how to avoid dangers will come more naturally, and our soldiers will get better at avoiding dangers and surviving their combat experience. And maybe they can then come home, healthy and whole and enjoy the reward of a normal life that they have more than earned through their service.

Reality Check

Cognitive dissonance is a psychological term which describes the uncomfortable tension that may result from having two conflicting thoughts at the same time, or from engaging in behavior that conflicts with one's beliefs.

That's straight from Wikipedia, but it is almost word for word the description given in last week's Science Friday episode where guest Elliot Aronson talked about his new book, Mistakes Were Made (but not by me).

The phenomenon of believing something so strongly that any proof to the contrary is simply ignored is easy to see in other people, hard to see in yourself.

He talked about people that had been convicted and sent to prison and then were later exonerated by DNA evidence and how prosecutors were reluctant to reopen these cases and sometimes insisted that they were still correct. This is an excellent example. Of course you aren't going to admit that you are putting innocent people in jail, that would make you a monster and everything you worked so hard for wrong and bad. No wonder people have elaborate mechanisms to support their denial.

Aronson used President Bush's going to war in Iraq as a huge public example of cognitive dissonance. And I have to agree, it fits perfectly. The original reasons have long since been abandoned, and a series of shifting reasons have cropped up as each reason falls apart by its own inherent weakness and incompatibility with reality. You see people on TV talking about what a great success this war is, and the banner moment of cognitive dissonance for this war when the President posed in front of a "Mission Accomplished" banner 3 stories tall. The problem with this sense of Presidential disconnect is how many people still buy into it. They want to believe, despite all that has happened since.

The more I think about it, the more I think that conservatives and Republicans are the poster children for cognitive dissonance. And they have their chief Kool-Aid dispenser, Rupert Murdoch and his flagship propaganda platform, Fox News. I guess, "We Make Things Up, You Keep Believing!" doesn't have the ring of "We Report, You Decide." Although "We Distort, You Deride!" is pretty close.

Look at Nixon. He never admitted that he did anything wrong and history judges him as the most corrupt President we've ever had. Clinton eventually admitted his wrongdoing and is now looked back on fondly as a very popular President.

Republicans respect Bush for his "Stay the Course" strength and steadfastness, and they hate Clinton for his wishy washiness. Yet, if you're making a mistake, isn't it better to figure that out and stop it? Who on Earth is not going to make mistakes sometimes? I'd rather have a leader that recognized that his approach wasn't working and corrected himself. That's not indecision, that's a firm grasp of reality.

I found a truly baffling blog called Willisms when I was casting about for some additional material for this posting. It's strange, because it points to the overwhelming success of the Iraq invasion and how Democracy is spreading like wildfire across the Middle East. It says that everyone that supported Bush was right and the rest of the world is suffering from Cognitive Dissonance. Like Jon Stewart said on Bill Moyer's show "we can't even agree on what reality is".

One part of the Science Friday discussion that I thought was very interesting was about Abraham Lincoln. There's a book called Team of Rivals, a recent biography of Lincoln (that I bought and have not yet read) that talks about the fact that many of his cabinet were bitter political rivals that disagreed with him violently. There was a caller to the show that talked about contrition, and how it is the opposite of cognitive dissonance, and how powerful contrition can be at healing the problems caused by stubborn denial. I think Lincoln's power was constantly being in the presence of those that disagreed with him so he was constantly forced to reevaluate his positions. Lincoln struggled with some of the worst conditions a person could ever be expected to see, and yet persisted and triumphed in the end. He changed his mind about things, for instance Slavery. Initially, he was not going to free the slaves, but he eventually came around. He changed positions on many things, yet one thing he never did was give up on the Union. Despite 4 years of horrendous bloody conflict, military failures, and growing dissatisfaction with the war, he persisted and won. He changed his tactics many times over the course of that war, yet we remember him today as someone that stayed the course and finished what he started.

Does anyone believe our President and this situation is analogous to those times?

Count Your Blessings

You may have seen an email going around attributed to Jay Leno. Jay Leno did not write it, it's on www.snopes.com. It's just the most recent fraudulently attributed mass email scam. An ultraconservative columnist probably with ties to the Bush administration wrote it and he probably got paid by the administration for writing it, too.

I was forwarded the email from my Aunt, who claimed that a friend of her daughter wrote the cover letter, but he did not. It's word for word from Snopes, too. He copied it from where ever he got the email. I had already noticed it and read it before my Aunt sent it to me.

The email, in a nutshell, says that people in the country are all dissatisfied, and they shouldn't be, they should count their blessings instead. This email really makes me mad. If you're interested in my take on the email, here is what I would write back to the guy who wrote it:

"Counting your blessings is fine, I believe. However, by this logic, you should be glad when you have a heart attack that your diabetes is under control. Or that the crazed madman cut off some of your fingers, but your toes are in fine shape! We don't concentrate on the positive because things that we fixed, solved, or set up long ago are supposed to keep working right. We concentrate on the negative, particularly the negative that we can control or stop so that we can identify the problems and fix them. That's what it is to be an engineer. I fix the problems. If I walked into a factory that was spewing toxic chemicals on the floor and about to explode and asked them why they were bitching because the lights were working fine, someone should just take away my license on the spot.

"If we can fix the many problems with the country and the direction it's heading right now, then we just have more things to be thankful about. Is the point of the letter to accuse anyone that thinks the War in Iraq is stupid that they ought to shut up and be happy that things aren't worse? How is that a shining example of an America you can be proud of? That sounds like criminal irresponsibility to me.

"People that don't like Bush are not anti-American and they are not against God. Buying into propaganda like this is dangerous. Only through participating in democracy, caring about what's going on, and by being willing to stand up and disagree when things are not going right will we ever be able to fix things. If you are curious about the opinion of another Republican, decorated war hero, and strongly devout conservative and his views to the contrary of this era of GOP Bush apologists, you should look at Dwight D. Eisenhower's speech he gave on January 17, 1960. 3 days before leaving office, he warned about a future situation that is an exact description of the Iraq War. It's his famous "Military Industrial Complex" speech. If he were alive today, he would not be in support of the War, or this administration. I have no doubt about it. He was most proud of the fact that in the opening years of the Cold War, that he did not escalate the world into a real war.

"We do have a wonderful country and we should be proud of it. Many people have sacrificed to make America great. We won't have a wonderful country in the future if we spend more time counting our blessings than securing our liberties and correcting our government when it's leading the country astray."

I finished my response by apologizing to my Aunt for getting on a soapbox. I told her that this patriot bashing drivel really gets under my skin, and that anyone that believes that I don't love this country because I don't agree with them should be ashamed of themselves. However, I didn't send this message to her, because she didn't write it or even take the time to really think about it or research it. My Aunt is a good person that I believe has fallen victim to the right wing ultraconservative Bush defending propagandists of the day. I would say that she is just a victim in this climate, but really, when people start questioning the patriotism of their fellow citizens, aren't we all victims?

Why not suicide?

Leaders like General Eisenhower on D-Day and General Grant during the Civil War were leaders that were willing to risk men's lives to achieve their military goals. In times of great crisis, there is a need to spend lives. We were keeping the nation together and fighting global domination by a madman.

Antietam was the single bloodiest day in American History. We spent 60,000 lives that day. The Iraq war has cost 3,300 lives and 20,000 injuries over 4 years. People look at these numbers and argue them both ways. Some say that those lives are not much, the casualty rate is very low. Others say that those lives are buying nothing, so their loss is not acceptable.

Everyone seems to have a great deal of derision and distain for the suicide bomber. I think that in order to defend against attacks such as this, you have to try to look at an insurgent's point of view. Last week, a man blew up a the gasoline truck on a bridge. He was the driver of the truck. I remember thinking, "this guy was a suicider and he had a regular job as a gasoline truck driver?" That's a guy that seems pretty normal and he's capable of sacrificing himself in order to further his cause. Was he just crazy?

Iraq is not a stand up war. If insurgents wore uniforms and tried to make coordinated attacks with conventional weapons against our forces, we would wipe them out completely and decisively. If you look at combat, willing combat against a foe you are determined to never quit fighting, as a situation where you have a high chance of dying, then suiciders are actually doing something that makes good military sense. If they stood up, they would have been shot down in battle. Since they know they are going to die, they can pick a place and make it happen for maximum effect. One life, spent like a smart bomb, right to the heart of matter.

We in Western Society, with our history and our traditions can understand sacrifices like D-Day. Valiant struggles against the odds to complete a dire mission. I was talking about operation Market garden with a friend, who talked about how that was a waste. I would normally have agreed, but I realized that a bold stroke like that would have saved lives if it would have shortened the war.

The thing that we cannot understand is the choice of target. Choosing civilians as targets seems so alien. If the goal is to simply reap chaos, they are achieving that goal. If the goal is to provoke an over response in order to paint the occupiers as evil and gain recruits, they are probably doing that. If the goal is to hurt us, striking civilian targets do not do that. If the killings are simply sectarian targets of opportunity, then our presence isn't doing anything at all, we're just watching a civil war.

The more I think about it, the more I think we should just get out. There's no point in any of it. I don't believe that they will be over here if we don't fight them over there. That's doesn't make any sense. The presence of our troops over there doesn't change the tactics that you would use to attack the U.S. You would still try to send a small number of people to blend in and try to form an attack that can't be protected against. Say a backpack of explosives in Times Square. I fail to see how the Iraq war prevents someone from doing this. If we were going to quit defending ourselves and our borders after we withdraw from Iraq, then we would be more vulnerable. No one has ever suggested this. I think the insurgents will stay in Iraq to gain control from the opposing factions. That will probably keep them tied up for quite some while. When all that is done, they'll have to consolidate and hold power and stave off an insurgency from their opponents. I just don't buy the thought that staying in Iraq makes us more safe.

Military Industrial Complex

You want to think you live in a rational world, where people play by the rules and good triumphs over evil. But sometimes you have to wonder.

I just listened to the speech on a podcast called Great Speeches in History (available at learnoutloud.com). This was the speech Dwight D. Eisenhower gave 3 days before he left the Presidency. It's the famous one you may recognize where he warns about the power of the Military Industrial Complex. Listening to it made me realize there are scary parallels with Viet Nam & Iraq, and that much of what DDE warned against was accurate and prophetic.

He was talking about communism, how we were threatened by a “hostile ideology - global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose, and insidious in method.” This is when I started thinking about the parallels with today’s “War on Terror” that the Bush Administration has sprung on us. DDE goes on to say, “unhappily the danger it poses promises to be of indefinite duration.” This is what we are being told about terrorism, it’s going to be a long fight and it’s going to be here for a long time. We paint Muslims in general, not just fanatic fundamentalists, as somehow “godless”. We do not recognize or accept the fact that they think they are on god’s side in this struggle and that they think we are the ones who are godless.

The difference between the cold war and the war on terror is how it’s being waged. Eisenhower goes on to say that his success, while not “winning” the struggle against communism, was in not breaking out into a shooting war. It’s true that in that era they believed that war meant nuclear war and thus the clear, swift, and permanent destruction of both sides in the conflict. While the use of wide scale nuclear weapons is not at issue now, there are other parallels, like the sense of impending doom and threat of loss of life, liberty, and happiness. My point is that not being goaded into rash action is what ultimately won us the cold war. Going to war in Iraq cannot win for us the war on terror.

Eisenhower talked about how each crisis would provoke the “temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties.” What do you call the Iraq War, if not the costly solution to terror proposed by the Bush administration? Eisenhower said that we would be told these costly solutions would be the only way to solve our problems. Then he urged caution and balance, and a need to look at the broader considerations. That has been sorely lacking in this administration, and conservative rhetoric has asserted that to even try to see the point of the people we are in opposition to is treasonous.

Eisenhower sensed that powerful forces, once entrenched, would continue to try to bring about conflict, or scare society into thinking one was inevitable or imminent. This is how they would perpetuate themselves and continue to grow and prosper. Only through constant vigilance could we avoid this pitfall. If you buy the premise, you have to wonder if these forces, those that stand to profit from war are working toward war, and putting those sympathetic to war in power. Then you look at the current President, and his Vice President with ties to Halliburton - a company that has profited enormously from this war, and you have to wonder about cause and effect. You have to wonder about a President that is clearly going to “stay the course” despite the obvious failure of his policies, the growing opposition of the public, and the feeble efforts of Congress to finally provide some oversight and restraint.

“We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together. “

What about our liberties? Look at the Patriot Act, Warrantless wiretaps, data mining, the detention without trial of people accused of terrorism, the deportation of people to be tortured by other governments overseas, the shifting around of people in secret CIA prisons, the failure to clearly exclude torture from our national policy, and the quasi-legal justifications for maintaining the prison in Guantanamo. It has already happened. What about democratic processes? Look at the razor thin election margins in 2000 & 2004, the questionable electronic voting machines with no paper trail that are made by Diebold (a company that contributed heavily to the Bush reelection campaign), the recess appointments of judges and a UN Secretary General that cannot be confirmed by the Senate, and the removal of US Attorneys for a failure to pursue partisan political objectives in their selection of caseloads. What Eisenhower cautioned against has already happened.

Eisenhower goes on to say that the ultimate goal is to have all humans live in peace and have their freedoms and security not threatened by other nations, peoples, or hostile ideologies. His vision of the future was a world where we cared about what happened to everyone in the world and we strived to make life better for everyone in the world. Indeed, he called upon God and his religion as demanding this of him. I believe Eisenhower had it right. The way to “drain the swamp” of terrorism is to drain the world of its recruits. The way to do this is to make the world so equitable and just that no one sees any sense or benefit in struggling against anything. That’s the way out of this mess. That’s the way to win the war on terror and make the world a better place in the process. I’m not saying it would be easy or could be done quickly. Like the cold war, it would take time, but in the end, we would have a lasting peace we could be proud of.

Justifications

Originally written 8/25/05:

Jon Stewart’s guest last night, Christopher Hitchens(promoting his latest book, Thomas Jefferson: Author of America - ISBN 0-06-059896-4) made some good arguments in favor of going to Iraq. In fact, he came closer than anyone ever has to convincing me that what we are doing is the right thing.

Hitchens laid out 4 reasons why we should invade a country. He said it’s justified when a leader (or country) 1) invades its neighbors 2) uses weapons of mass destruction 3) commits genocide or 4) harbors terrorists. He concluded that Saddam Hussein had done all of these at one time or another. The counter-argument that the time to respond and take him out was after the Kuwait invasion, he conceded.

Jon Stewart’s counter-argument was that he just doesn’t like the way Bush talks to us. He doesn’t like the way that Bush belittles and sneers at his opponents.

I found myself both agreeing with him and terribly disappointed in his answer. You don’t want to hear the champion of your cause (or maybe just your views) expose the utter weakness of one of your core beliefs.

It’s not easy to look in the mirror and see someone that is behaving exactly as the very people you spent 8 years in the Clinton years despising. The Clinton haters rarely could come up with a better argument than “I don’t like the way he looks and I don’t like the way he talks.”

OK, now the shoe is one the other foot. But let’s review some of the reasons for disliking the way the country has been run the last 5 years and some of the contrasts to the previous 8.

The economy is in stark contrast. The past 5 years have certainly been the most dismal economic time in my life. I wasn’t alive during the Great Depression, so I can’t compare, but I’m sure some of the benchmarks surpass those times. The only good thing you can say is that there wasn’t a total collapse, and we seem to be pulling out of it shakily.

We have no plan for cutting our dependence on foreign oil, and I discount more drilling in ANWAR, as it will have little impact (in supply) and will take too long to develop to help – it does not address the root cause or move us boldly into the future.

We are suppressing scientific development. Rather than using government to prod or encourage science and continue to keep our lead in technology, we have the glaring example of opposition to stem cell research. I’ll even concede that the development of new technologies needs ethical guidelines and moral oversight, but just slamming the door shut is not good enough. First, it totally removes government from the game, actually inviting abuses. Second, it ignores reality. The promise of the technology is too strong to expect that it will wait or go away. If we don’t do it, someone else will, and if the government doesn’t take a hand in it, we will lose control of the direction the technology goes and where it will take us. I could go into the question of genetically engineered humans or the whole way that patenting and tightly held intellectual property drives the cost of those innovations up and beyond the means of the average person or how pharmaceutical solutions tend to create “addictions” to medical technology rather than curing root causes, but those are other issues.

What’s more important, getting back to Iraq, is what we were told about why we were going into Iraq. I’ve often thought that if Bush had just said, “He’s a bad man, it’s time to take him out,” he’d be better off right now. As it stands, he justified the war saying there were weapons of mass destruction, which there were not. Then he said they had the ability to make them, which they did not. Then he said that they were planning to make them, which is ridiculous. Then he tried to make it seem that Saddam was involved in 9/11, which is easy for many people to accept, regardless of the fact that there is no proof or evidence of any connection. Then he started to say that the world and Iraq is better off without Hussein. Unfortunately, that’s not really clear. You could argue that the heavy hand of an oppressive dictator kept the lid on the current pre-civil war explosive situation. Saddam could keep the oil flowing to the world and kept the electricity flowing to his people. This argument doesn’t excuse Saddam to the outside world, but it gives the insurgents something to rally around and it prevents the average citizen over there from having confidence in our presence. Don’t even get me started on “We will be greeted as liberators”.

The other major problem is the planning and execution of the war. We certainly had Halliburton ready and primed in order to keep the oil flowing, which it turned out wasn’t necessary. What we didn’t have was enough troops, enough armor, enough local authorities, any appreciation of the growing insurgency or any semblance of a coherent plan.

The major thing that fills me with dismay when I look at the current administration is the feeling that things are getting much worse. We are supposed to relinquish personal freedoms because of a threat of terrorism. We are not supposed to question how people connected with the administration or those of already comfortable means are in a position to profit wildly at a time when the rest of the country watches their standard of living slipping away. We are not trying to solve any long term problems, medical care, the environment, or the future of our energy supply.

And the thing I fear the most is the death of truth and the total annihilation of civility. It started during the campaigns, when winning an election was so important that it justified trying to trash the reputation of a respected war veteran (twice! once with McCain before Kerry). It’s nothing new for people seeking power to play with the truth in order to get support. But those are the people that ended up on the trash heap of history (Joe McCarthy was quite popular for a while, but you don’t ever hear people singing his praises now).

I think the thing that angers me is that any student of history would measure Bush as one of the worst presidents this country has ever had. The problem is that people that live in the current day often can’t see how things are likely to end up. I see the Bush era as a time that future people will look back on as a dark time with an incompetent leader. But the guy in the parking lot with the W sticker on his SUV thinks people that think like me are anti-American. In their eyes, those of us that can really see how it is, we are the problem.