Comments across the web tell the stories we ignore

If you have combat PTSD, do not play this game or any game like it. You are teaching your body and mind to stay on edge instead of teaching them to clam down. It will make PTSD worse than it would be if you spent that much time on healing instead.


I read comments across the web all the time but that's what I do. Most people figure that if it isn't on the news, they don't need to know. While this post comes from a satire site, it raised a lot of comments that pretty much tell the story of what countless veterans are going through.

From Washington D.C. comes word today that the Veterans Affairs has approved the first PTSD claim for trauma experienced while playing Battlefield 3.

Officials with the Veterans Affairs in Washington D.C. released the news that the agency has approved a disability claim, filed by a junior Air Force enlisted personal, for PTSD based on trauma experienced while playing the ultra-realistic Battlefield 3 video game.

According to sources, the service member claimed that during the past year, while at his duty station at Wright-Patterson Airbase, the trauma was a result of several hours a day spent playing Battlefield 3. The trauma was made worse, according to the service member, since, “most of the time spent playing the game was playing in Hardcore mode where I was often abandoned by my team members and left to defend points by myself.”
read more here

Why do i get denied after four tours in afghanistan and iraq (outside the wire), yet some guy in dire need of midol is approved for the thing we did between missions? Stupidity and frivolity are the reasons deserving men and women are not properly treated or cared for when they return from the war. I want to be angered. I want infantry rage to bathe all i see in ruin and destruction, yet all i feel is the hopelessness that one person caused by disrespecting the fallen and those who endure real suffering. Its a pain that permeates the deepest recesses of our souls. There is no pause button for that type of anguish.

That comment comes from a lot of pain. Pain most Americans don't want to know because then their patriotic fantasy of sending them off to combat would simply vanish. They figure all they have to do is say they support the troops, wave a few flags during a parade and they repaid the debt.

Our real duty starts with making sure there is a reason to send them in the first place. Make sure they have the plans and equipment they need along with making sure the American people are invested in it, paying for it instead of going shopping and taking tax cuts for the rich. (That way, they may not forget all about them after they are sent.) When the plans don't work, they demand better plans. We didn't do that. We kept our mouths shut as the rich held out their hands for tax cuts and then we watched mindless cable shows.

Most Americans are still not paying attention. If they did, then you wouldn't see the other rules of combat evaporate. The rule of making sure the families of the fallen had all they need, rule of the wounded and their families having what they needed, rule of making sure they had jobs if they could work or compensation if they could not, all gone along with what congress got away with not doing. They are suffering for what we asked the to do because we didn't take any time to care about them.