War Is a Drug

This is what war does to you. (From an essay published by a former serviceman, Charles Whittington, who is being barred from attending his college because his essay a bit too...harsh for them.)

Note that I don't endorse the views in this essay.

War is a drug. When soldiers enter the military from day one, they begin to train and are brain washed to fight and to handle situations in battle. We train and train for combat, and then when we actually go to war, it is reality and worse than what we have trained for. We suffer through different kinds of situations. The Army never taught how to deal with our stress and addictions.

War is a drug because when soldiers are in the Infantry, like me, they get used to everything, and fast. I got used to killing and after a while it became something I really had to do. Killing becomes a drug, and it is really addictive. I had a really hard time with this problem when I returned to the United States, because turning this addiction off was impossible. It is not like I have a switch I can just turn off. To this day, I still feel the addictions running through my blood and throughout my body, but now I know how to keep myself composed and keep order in myself, my mind. War does things to me that are so hard to explain to someone that does not go through everything that I went through. That's part of the reason why I want to go back to war so badly, because of this addiction.

Over in Iraq and Afghanistan killing becomes a habit, a way of life, a drug to me and to other soldiers like me who need to feel like we can survive off of it. It is something that I do not just want, but something I really need so I can feel like myself. Killing a man and looking into his eyes, I see his soul draining from his body; I am taking away his life for the harm he has caused me, my family, my country.

Killing is a drug to me and has been ever since the first time I have killed someone. At first, it was weird and felt wrong, but by the time of the third and fourth killing it feels so natural. It feels like I could do this for the rest of my life and it makes me happy.

There are several addictions in war, but this one is mine. This is what I was trained to do and now I cannot get rid of it; it will be with me for the rest of my life and hurts me that I cannot go back to war and kill again, because I would love too. When I stick my blade through his stomach or his ribs or slice his throat it's a feeling that I cannot explain, but feels so good to me, and I become addicted to seeing and acting out this act of hate, and violence against the rag heads that hurt our country. Terrorists will have nowhere to hide because there are hundreds of thousands of soldiers like me who feel like me and want their revenge as well.

Never mind that last bit: killing "terrorists" and "ragheads" is what he was trained and socialized to do.

This is what it can do to you. Maybe it doesn't affect everybody the same way. Maybe Charles is an extreme case. But everybody should read the essay and think about its lessons, especially the odious "keyboard kommandos" who treat military intervention so lightly because they're so ignorant about it.

When the awesome explosions stop, when the pageantry is over, when the cameras showing APCs racing across the desert turn off...these are the problems that you have to deal with.

And you MUST deal with them. Or, very shortly, they'll be YOUR problems too.

Edit: Though there are questions about whether or not this fellow saw the sort of service that he's claiming. But if he didn't, and he had these issues before serving, then that just raises a question: why was he a Marine in the first place?