Blind side of the military

Blind side of the military
by
Chaplain Kathie

(Sandra Bullock) Leigh Anne Tuohy saw a huge teenager walking down the street, alone, cold, clearly heading nowhere. (Quinton Aaron) Michael Oher was a giant. Leigh Anne managed to see that he was also gentle and in need of some TLC. She saw past his size and saw him with her heart. The family took him into their home and he became a part of the family.

Oher was strong and showed great courage in this true story of a real life. He could have taken out anyone on the football field with ease but it took Leigh Anne to get him to see past the fact he was not trying to hurt anyone as much as he was trying to defend his new family of football players just as he wanted to take care of his new real family in the Tuohy house. Then he shined.

Oher's life had been hard with a life in poverty, surrounded by drugs and violence, yet Oher maintained his compassion no matter what came into his life. This is a movie leaders in the military should see so that maybe once and for all, they would understand the men and women they command.

Synopsis
Taken in by a well-to-do family and offered a second chance at life, a homeless teen grows to become the star athlete projected to be the first pick at the NFL draft in this sports-themed comedy drama inspired by author Michael Lewis' best-seller The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game. Michael Oher was living on the streets when he was welcomed into the home of a conservative suburban family, but over time he matured into a talented athlete. As the NFL draft approaches, fans and sports radio personalities alike speculate that Oher will be the hottest pick of the year. Sandra Bullock stars in a film written and directed by John Lee Hancock (The Rookie, The Alamo). - Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
http://www.moviefone.com/movie/the-blind-side/37685/synopsis

Bravery and courageous acts are not defused by compassion. They are fed by it. Tuohy had to point out to Oher that his team was his family and he had to watch their backs the same way he watched their backs. He didn't want to harm but he strongly wanted to defend. This is what the men and women in the military have within them. They have a strong desire to defend their country and their buddies in battle and beyond.

The enemy our troops face, much like during the Vietnam war, have shown very little compassion for their own people. Their lust for blood and revenge has placed their own innocent countrymen, women and children into insignificant collateral damage categories. Blowing up as many as possible no matter who is paying the price, is not what noble people do no matter how much they want to justify doing it. Compassion allows are troops to hold back on what revenge would have them do. With the numbers of troops in and out of Iraq as well as Afghanistan, very few instances have been reported of them snapping or going on a shooting rampage. Why? Is it just the rules of engagement preventing them from turning into machines?

In those moments when they have to decide to allow rage to control them or their humanity, most rely on their humanity. Does this stop them from being courageous? No because it takes a lot more courage to stop shooting than to run out of bullets hitting every human in the area.

Does the military understand what PTSD is or why it strikes some instead of others? No and it looks as if they are no closer to understanding this. They train men to kill and they train women to use the same weapons just in case they are faced with an enemy attack but they are not trained to fully engage the enemy as the men are. This is a huge problem with urban warfare unfolding in the streets of Iraq as well as the villages of Afghanistan. There are no safe jobs to have, no safe zones out of harms way and no one to really put trust in among the locals. In the process of training them to kill, they fail to notice they are not able to train them to stop being human or to stop being the person they were since birth.

Qualities we want most in people in civilian life is within them, naturally at different levels just as each one of a group will have different levels of compassion, mercy, love and patience, they come into the military with their own levels of each. This level and the experiences they encounter predict who will be wounded and who will walk away with limited "cuts" to their soul. This is also predicted by the number of times the events strike them. It is why the Army had issued a warning years ago stating clearly the re-deployments increase the risk of PTSD, much like the last straw broke the camels back, it is a matter of one too many times piled on many other times. Sooner or later the cuts on top of cuts penetrate too deeply.

In a perfect world, they would all be able to talk to someone after a firefight or after a bomb blew up, just as civilians have the ability to talk to someone after traumatic events shattering their peaceful life. This is not a perfect world and few people are available to deployed forces. As it is, there are Chaplains untrained to address PTSD, crisis management or intervention, with even fewer trauma trained mental health professionals deployed to respond. The responders that are trained are vital to heading off more damage.

When a soldier or Marine is severely, physically wounded, the mental wound is assumed and they receive help by doctors and nurses right away. They receive it from other patients. They receive it from their families. It is assumed they will need help to "get over it" and deal with the wound they will carry for the rest of their lives, but when the body is whole there is the assumption of wholeness of the person because no one wants to see with their hearts as easily as they see with their eyes.

For some people this wound is as obvious as any flesh wound. There are clear signs of it in their actions, facial movements, eye movements and reactions. Some will develop twitches. Some become hostile when they had shown no signs of hostility within them before. Some will stop acting as if they care about anyone including themselves. The list of the aftermath of trauma grows as it is allowed to fester infecting more and more of the person they always used to be. The sooner they receive intervention, the lesser the damage PTSD can do to them and the people in their lives.

Oher had someone to care about him, see past the obvious, intervene in his life changing the path he was on and then changing the way he thought about things. He was a person of strength and compassion with courage to do what was necessary to defend. We have this in the men and women serving in the military but they have been on the commanders blind side for far too long. Instead of feeding the compassion and courage that caused them to enter into the military in the first place, they have been trying to beat it out of them acting as if compassion has no place in combat. To the contrary it has every reason to be in combat or there would be no rules of engagement at all.

The compassion has to be placed as an emotion of honor and then the military can use it just as Tuohy used it to get Oher to defend his family in a football game. Feeding the notion of being killing machines does no good when innocents are killed or when a friend dies in front of their eyes. Using the compassion to defend their friends and their country as well as the people they were sent to fight for, will honor that and them. Understanding that will also end the stigma of being wounded by what they were willing to do.