MGx - Musings, Essays & Ballads

This is old news but well worth revisitiing. Julian Delasantellis has written an in depth article relating to unit cohesion amongst today’s military compared to the revolving door, individual trooop deployments of Vietnam. This was explained in detail in Jonathan Shay’s book, Achilles in Vietnam.
So who actually is in the US military in Iraq? […]

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Thanks to Bob Fischer for arranging this!
From 3 to 5 p.m., on Sunday, December 2nd, Dr. Richard Staggenborg will be speaking in the Sprague Community Room at the Bandon Public Library. His topic will be “Coping with Post-Combat Stress: Information for Vets, Families, Friends and Health Professionals.” Dr. Staggenborg practices at the Bandon Veterans Clinic. […]

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From Rawstory more than 100 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans are committing suicide each week! Though, clearly casualties of the war these numbers are not included in the Pentagon list of dead. Support our troops and bring them home now and lets take care of them.

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Watch this, if you can… please America, see what it is we do to our warriors when we send them to war.

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This was sent to me by a friend and I thought her words were perfect.
As I read today’s paper about all of the local events taking place to honor our war veterans, I found something lacking. There was not one event that seemed to welcome Veterans for Peace. It was all […]

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Well, here it is, yet another price of war. Repeated deployments and an incompetent system to deal with the mental health toll on our GI’s is taking a staggering toll.
Some advocates say the early presence of veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan at shelters does not bode well for the future. It took roughly a […]

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A while back I wrote about a book, Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character by Jonathon Shay, describing the effects of war on our troops. Shay wrote another book, Odysseus in America: Combat trauma and the Trials of Homecoming detailing the impact upon veterans and their families as they […]

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Will Show New Film about AWOL GI’s in Canada
During the last four years, more than 20,000 U.S. military personnel have gone AWOL. A couple hundred GI’s headed to Canada rather than deploy to the U.S. war and occupation of Iraq. Gerry Condon knows what these young men and women are going through. […]

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Vietnam veteran and co founder of Veterans for Peace and Vietnam Veterans Against War has succumbed to the effects of Agent Orange and multiple gunshot wounds sustained in Vietnam. Dave passed September 15, 2007 but will be long remembered for his heroism and his tireless work toward peace. Read his online memorial here
Below […]

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The Nation has published an investigative article exposing the reality of war and what it does to the people fighting it. Fifty Iraq combat veterans were interviewed, several of whom I know personally and have heard their stories first hand.

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A friend, himself a Vietnam combat veteran, gave me a copy of Achilles In Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character, by Jonathan Shay, MD, PhD. Published in 1994, Shay transposes Homer’s Iliad with the combat experiences of Vietnam veterans still suffering after more than twenty years after the war. Taken from the testimony of these traumatized vets it is written as much by them as by Shay.

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