Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for March 02, 2011

I don’t recall BD having any issues after coming back from Vietnam - just the opposite. And I think he was fine after the Gulf war. It was when he came back from Iraq without a leg that the mental issues also started kicking in.

I see BD lending a helping hand. The older BD gets, the more I like him.

Had a cop co-worker call that a friend was jailed for DUI. “I’ll spring him.” “How much have you been drinking?” “Ahh, maybe you’d better call someone else.”

GEE1A I’ll raise my hand! I found that I had a shorter temper since returning from the sandtrap too.

Time for the hat: “Instant A**Hole–Just Add Alcohol!”

wonder if he’ll meet Red Rascal on the way over

Ray definitely seems to be wound too tight. If he is about to redeploy, that would seem to indicate he has been stateside for at least 12 months. I guess that has not been long enough to decompress. Someone may need to question if it is safe to send him back into combat. He could “go postal” and take out his whole unit for “looking at him funny” which would not be at all funny.

Should have left him in the jail padded cell for a few more days.

TexTech, the entire purpose of military conditioning is to get you to identify with your fellow soldiers. An experienced soldier going postal on his own unit wouldn’t be wound up too tight; he’d be facing a complete psychotic break from reality.

Ron Moreau wrote this article about the effect PTSD is having on the Taliban. It makes me wonder, will the war end when both sides are too traumatized to be effective?

rule 1: Get THEM to swing first. A “look” just doesn’t do it.

rule 2: With as many as six deployments, rule 1 should no longer apply.

In “my day” I used rule 1, a number of times, not “looking for a fight”, but not avoiding it either. Today, my son is finding citizen apathy as big a fight.

I knew Vietnamese, just like Afghans, who’d NEVER KNOWN A TIME OF ‘PEACE”– so finding someone WITHOUT PTSD would be “difficult” in these populations. That is what our “gung ho” folks at home do not understand as they push for still more incursions abroad. What is Obama supposed to do about Libya? NOT A THING!!

^ I agree Mr. Trout. Another rule; Never start a second war when you are involved in one! Some are wanting a third one now. The “Sandbox” is Iraq. We are still there.

Vietnam has changed a lot! The average age in Vietnam is 28 years old - so a huge percentage of the population have not known war at all. When the old people talk about it, which is rare, it is with the nostalgia that the Greatest Generation talk about returning from WW2. The young people just roll their eyes and ignore such irrelevant musings from a world gone by.

I agree, dtroutma, some of these countries just have to deal with their own messes. I do not like the idea of Americans producing human targets for other countries to aim at year after year after year………..! But, I’m feelin a little disjointed myself reading this current line of Doonesbury.