Really Supporting The Troops

Really Supporting The Troops

You may see ads all over the place and a slew of other circle jerking about how people support their troops and what not, but how true is all that actually? I mean, do you really support your troops? In a way that isn't just being okay with the senseless killing of brown desert people?

Because from what it sounds like, we're not doing much in the way of really supporting the troops..

JOINT BASE LEWIS MCCHORD, Wash. - A soldier's widow says his fellow Army Rangers wouldn't do anything to help him before he took his own life - after eight deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Army found Staff Sgt. Jared Hagemann's body at a training area of Joint Base Lewis McChord a few weeks ago.

A spokesman for the base tells KOMO News that the nature of the death is still undetermined. But Staff Sgt. Hagemann's widow says her husband took his own life - and it didn't need to happen.

"It was just horrible. And he would just cry," says Ashley Hagemann.

Ashley says her husband Jared tried to come to grips with what he'd seen and done on his eight deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"And there's no way that any God would forgive him - that he was going to hell," says Ashley. "He couldn't live with that any more."

While you've probably come to expect me to make some snide comment about the troops based on my feelings of our continuous escalation of our war efforts over seas, I'm not without some sympathy.

It's really tragic and strange that the only way this man could prove he was really human was to destroy his humanity. Think about it for a second. I shouldn't be surprised that this is a normal response to the brutality of the American armed forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I highly suggest reading Full Spectrum Disorder. It's a really good book.


Yeah, I'm sure I'll make a comment or two in this post about how he's right that God won't forgive him, but mainly because he doesn't exist. Not to mention that he might not have been going to hell before, but shit if suicide is kind of a game changer in this whole voter tally on having a 1-way ticket to hell.

But this kind of thing really is tragic. This guy realized how fucked up and evil what he had done with and seen during his time with the military was, but he had no real framework or support structure that would allow him to cope with that and use the realization to try to undo some of the damage he had done. The only viable options to him was suicide.

And while I think it's entirely possible that whatever he did was so beyond the pale as to be totally incompatible with any present or near-future notions of humanity, that there was no real guarantee that every act would be something he could cope with, It does seem like a waste of a life.

What ever happened to the days when instead of killing themselves, ex-service men instead radicalized like what happened during Vietnam. That's the real loss here. That someone who witnessed the horrors that not only is man capable of, but what America is fully able and willing to do.

Though maybe I shouldn't be surprised by all this. I mean, did you know that Troop is Russian for corpse. Take a moment to think about that one. But perhaps this one instance (of many more) with someone committing suicide because of the actions that our country had them carry out. Think about all this the next time you suggest that you support your troops.