Reply #116: Am I the only one . . .

[Heidi]

who sees this whole thing playing out and wonders what we, as a culture, have been doing (or not doing) that yields this sort of barbarism?

One of my dearest friends is a Vietnam vet who suffers from PTSD; he remarked to me the other day that if we think Vietnam yielded a lot of PTSD victims, that number will pale in comparison to the psychological fallout of Iraq, on both sides. He reasons that the generation of U.S. troops fighting this war is entirely different than the generation that fought the Vietnam war.

In general, my friend says, the young men in Iraq were raised on combat video games (some U.S. Armed Forces websites even offer online combat games, I'm told), Ritalin, TV and the Internet, and those influences can make a world of difference in one's humanity and ability to deal with stressful, real-life scenarios. Further, he maintains that these cumulative cultural influences have, in effect, groomed a generation of young people to be used as pawns in the Right's power-grabbing endeavors.

I don't know whether my friend is right, but his argument seems worthy of consideration.