Training Afghans as Bullets Fly: A Young Marine’s Dream Job

While reading this article from Afghanistan I was troubled by what read.

“If you do what I do, then they think either you should have PTSD or you are some sort of psychopath.” PTSD is post-traumatic stress disorder.

Is that what some of them really think? Or is it what they think we think about them? Or maybe it's just tough talk? We don't know but we do know how a lot of them come home. No, not all with the wound of PTSD, but far too many. We don't understand it anymore than we understand why it is that some neighborhood kid has it within them to join the military and be able to "do what they do" and like it. We don't understand it anymore than we can understand what makes a cop become a cop or a firefighter decide he wants to run into burning buildings for a living. We can't understand them because we are not them, we need them, constantly depending on them to do what needs to be done and then somehow, we end up forgetting all about what they did for us when they end up needing us.

The comment made is a truthful one. They don't all end up as psychopath or wounded, but they all end up changed by what they go thru. Some are made differently than the rest of us and we should thank God they are.

Training Afghans as Bullets Fly: A Young Marine’s Dream Job

By C. J. CHIVERS
Published: April 30, 2009
FIREBASE VIMOTO, Afghanistan — Three stone houses and a cluster of sandbagged bunkers cling to a slope above the Korangal Valley, forming an oval perimeter roughly 75 yards long. The oval is reinforced with timber and ringed with concertina wire.

An Afghan flag flutters atop a tower where Afghan soldiers look out, ducking when rifle shots snap by.

This is Firebase Vimoto, named for Pfc. Timothy R. Vimoto, an American soldier killed in the valley two years ago. If all goes according to the Pentagon’s plan, this tiny perimeter — home to an Afghan platoon and two Marine Corps infantrymen — contains the future of Afghanistan. The Obama administration hopes that eventually the Afghan soldiers within will become self-sufficient, allowing the fight against the Taliban to be shifted to local hands.

He woke the next day before 4 a.m. for a patrol. As he slipped into his ammunition vest, he groused that back home, when conversations drift to the war, the infantry too often is misunderstood. “You know what I don’t like about America?” he said, in the chill beneath lingering stars. “If you do what I do, then they think either you should have PTSD or you are some sort of psychopath.” PTSD is post-traumatic stress disorder.

He exhaled cigarette smoke. “This is my job,” he said. “There’s nothing wrong with it.”

The war in Afghanistan defies generalization. Each province, each valley and each village can be its own universe, presenting its own problems and demanding its own solutions.
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Training Afghans as Bullets Fly: A Young Marine’s Dream Job