How can we be assured that American soldiers we ask to protect and safeguard our nation, are not being forced into actions and activities that will mentally haunt and impair them for the rest of their lives? How do we do a better, more moral job out on the battlefield? What are our reasons as a nation for involving ourselves in war and are these reasons good enough, based upon what is happening to the men who are doing this job for us?
I’m reminded of famous lines in the movie “Coming Home.” John Voight plays the main character, a disabled war veteran, whose character clarifies an extremely important point for all of us to ponder on when he says,
“I wanted to be a war hero, man, I wanted to go out and kill for my country. And now, I’m here to tell you that I have killed for my country or whatever. And I don’t feel good about it. Because there’s not enough reason, man, to feel a person die in your hands or to see your best buddy get blown away. I’m here to tell you, it’s a lousy thing, man. I don’t see any reason for it. And there’s a lot of shit that I did over there that I find fucking hard to live with.”
Based upon the atrocities that some of our men are being forced into carrying out, I am inclined to agree with him.
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Calvin Gibbs, Soldier, Found Guilty In Gruesome Afghanistan War Crimes Case
JOINT BASE LEWIS-McCHORD, Wash. — A U.S. Army soldier accused of exhorting his bored underlings to slaughter three civilians for sport was convicted of murder, conspiracy and other charges Thursday in one of the most gruesome war crimes cases to emerge from the Afghan war.
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Morlock and others told investigators that soon after Gibbs joined the unit in 2010, he began talking about how easy it would be to kill civilians, and discussed scenarios where they might carry out such murders.
Asked why soldiers might have agreed to go along with it, Morlock testified that the brigade had trained for deployment to Iraq before having their orders shifted at the last minute to Afghanistan.
The infantrymen wanted action and firefights, he testified, but instead they found themselves carrying out a more humanitarian counter-insurgency strategy that involved meetings and handshaking.
Another soldier, Staff Sgt. Robert Stevens, who at the time was a close friend of Gibbs, told investigators that in March 2010, he and others followed orders from Gibbs to fire on two unarmed farmers in a field; no one was injured. Gibbs claimed one was carrying a rocket-propelled grenade launcher, but that was obviously false, Stevens said.
Stevens also testified that Gibbs bragged to him about the second killing, admitting he planted an AK-47 on the victim’s body because he suspected the man on involvement with the Taliban, according to a report on the testimony in The News Tribune newspaper of Tacoma.
But during the trial, Gibbs insisted he came under fire.
“I was engaged by an enemy combatant,” he said. “Luckily his weapon appeared to malfunction and I didn’t die.”
Gibbs testified that he wasn’t proud about having removed fingers from the bodies of the victims, but said he tried to disassociate the corpses from the humans they had been as a means of coming to terms with the things soldiers are asked to do in battle.
The muscular 6-foot-4 staff sergeant also testified that he did it because other soldiers wanted the trophies, and he agreed in part because he didn’t want his subordinates to think he was a wimp.
Gibbs initially faced 16 charges, but one was dropped during the trial.
I had some curiosity about them. My eyes kept returning to the pair as I struggled internally, wondering about the Kindle, but also possessively noting the wonderful feel and smell of my own small, badly-weathered paperback book. As I turned the pages oh-so-carefully, I noticed that they were a little yellowed and stained too, due to age and the elements, probably from spending time in a storage room at some point, I would imagine. 
Are we reaching out to others and giving them what they need, or do we offer the very convenient “I’ll pray for you..” and leave them hungry, unable to feed their families or them-selves?
life of a female bible warrior 
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