I'll grant you this, maybe this is only my perception that ST6 was a widely known entity prior to the Obama administration but maybe I am mistaken. That said, I remember reading Richard Marcinko's (sp?) while I was in over 20 years ago and I feel pretty certain that he discussed ST6 openly in his book. Again, in the spirit of not splitting hairs I will concede that the majority of the public had no knowledge of them.
Rogue Warrior came out in 1992 and yes, he discussed it. That said, I have read it and while it is amazingly detailed and fascinating, it doesn't have broad appeal (pun intended, lol). It is succinct, brutal, and hardcore, just like Dick. At the time he was competing with fictionalized novels about war by authors like Clancy and Ambrose. Even true stories like Black Hawk Down and Blind Man's Bluff were turned down by major publishers because they didn't think the public wanted such real/depressing stories about Americans at war. Can you imagine people at that time reading Marcinko's book in any large distribution? I would be curious to see what sales numbers were both before and after Bin Laden's assassination.
War real/depressing? Pfffft! Only in books and movies. Everyone knows wars are fought through TV screens, head-up displays and joystick. Hell, it's not even a real war in Afghanistan because men and women being killed in ground combat would be newsworthy. The only stories I see about it is when an A/C goes down, Karzai craps in his mouth again, or a bombing occurs in the Kabul security zone. The family whose lives were just ripped apart by some nameless officer and a chaplain? Eh, it happens. After all, no one forced them to be a Soldier or Marine or US Ambassador.
Black Hawk Down came out in 1999, almost a decade after the Gulf War kicked off. Things have changed a bit regarding coverage and resolve. I tend to think the romanticized or fictionalized versions created a truly false understanding of what soldiers, Marines, etc really deal with. America sees cool commandos going on secret missions. The reality is they are government trained killers and killing is killing. We should have more concern over the increasing number of PTSD sufferers at home who are not getting what they need.
This is an excellent point. The full ramifications of any war are never felt until the soldiers come home. That said, our mental health system is in shambles in this country.....not just for returning veterans but for everybody.
Nice deflection of her point, but not really. I'm sure it's someone else's fault for the "mental stability" in this country, god forbid anyone actually have any accountability.....
It has nothing to do with being "someone else's fault," and has everything to do with stopping tragedies like Aurora, Newtown and all the other mass shootings by mentally unstable people. I am sure you guys probably think because I lean left politically that I agree with the President about new gun laws to stop these shootings but I do not. My wife is a therapist and every single day I see the ramifications of what a privatized mental health system looks like and the negative results that it produces. No, quite the contrary, I see mental health as an extension of our National Defense budget, or at least that is the way it should be. A well funded mental health system will prevent crazy people from shooting up schools and theaters, not gun control. And the problem with our mental health system is exactly what you just said, "It's not my problem to fix someone else's mental health problems...." Well, guess what, when it's your family members who are killed by one of these lunatics, you'll change your thinking. This notion that it's not your problem is a fantasy world and one that has far reaching consequences. Further, I have absolutely no need to deflect any point she's made because I have refuted every single one that I disagreed with. In case you haven't noticed, I am like the lone left voice around here, or at least that is the way it feels sometimes. That said, I don't duck issues or questions and I sure as hell have no need to deflect. This actually proves my point that you have no interest in the truth or even an interest in weighing the opinion of others. Regardless of the topic or sensitivity of the issue you give it the carte blanche republican reply that the problem must arise from some lazy sluggard who isn't willing to accept responsibility for themselves. Now, I'm putting it to you, are you willing to accept responsibility for the ignorant statement you made above? Are you willing to admit that what you said was short sighted and was without a better knowledge of the subject matter? Are you willing to accept responsibility for your own actions? Accountability.
One way to stop it. Quit sending our military members all over the world to fight other people's battles. Or at the minimum, limit the number of deployments.
Amen. I tend to think that your constant choice of seeing things through a directional prism is limiting your ability to see a complete picture. Who cares about left and right? I sure don't. I care about people, I care about restoring this country to what it used to be, if that is even possible. Our government has become a massive beaurocracy with an increasing public dependence on handouts and support. The long term psychological effects of a society dependent on it's government are hard to undo....look at Russia. A well funded mental health system will not stop shooters. There is zero evidence to support that theory. The administrative processes that have clogged every single government entity will be no different for mental health. Think USPS. The government has zero incentive to be streamlined, to make a profit, or to do anything other than get bigger. See a therapist, pick up a prescription. Yea, I really want to live in zombie land.
I could say the very same thing about you as it relates to seeing things through a directional prism. Fact is, when you say you want to "restore this country to what it used to be" you are repeating the very same thing that people have said for generations, yet time marches on and society changes, evolves, becomes something different with each passing generation. Forget restoring things to the way they used to be because it's impossible and it will never happen. You say that our government has become a massive bureaucracy with an increasing public dependence but do you understand why? It's not like this is some phenomenon that has taken us all by surprise: dependence on government safety net programs have spiked since 2008 when the economy crashed. Further, the bulk of those who have taken new government assistance are aging baby boomers who've been pushed out of the job market due to the down turn. This notion that the number of slackards has increased exponentially over the past 6 years is ignorant and displays no appreciation for the nuances that have actually led to this increase. All of this said, do you realize that we have over 350,000 fewer government employees today than we had when Ronald Reagan was President? I doubt that you do. If pressed on the subject as to what your definition of this "massive bureauicracy" actually entails you would probably point to Obamacare first, which would be incorrect since Obamacare isn't actually a government take over of health care since it perfectly preserves the private insurance industry and actully insures no one. Furthermore, it has been upheld by the very conservative Supreme Court. Next you would point to the NSA programs that have been in the news lately and I would admit that those programs need reigning in but let's do recall that it's not like those just started last week. You would probably next refer to the gun control push that supposedly threatened the 2nd amendment and would have created a gun registry (which isn't true) but that never actually passed so I don't know how it could apply to this "massive beaurocracy" that you are referring to. Any study you can find recently says the size of our government is smaller than it has been in the past forty years and our tax rates are at historic lows. The last time our tax rates were this low was right before the Great Depression. What exactly do you mean when you say "massive bureaucracy"? Your notion of how the mental health system operates is naive at best. Privatization of the mental health industry has left us with less services for more money. How does that work? Last time I checked the goal is to maximize the results for the money invested. The idea that the private sector could do it cheaper has been shattered right here in NC where our very conservative legislature are now considering scrapping the private system because we have ten years worth of data to support the fact that the privatized system has increased costs and exponentially increased fraud. I think you have zero understanding that the vast majority of violent crimes in this country are committed by people who have a history of mental illness. What you like calling "evil" is actually mentally ill. Aurora, Newton, Virginia Tech, Gabby Giffords, Santa Monica College, the Sikh temple shootings.....all with one common theme.....a mentally ill young man with no grip on reality kills too many people. We know for certain that the onset of serious mental illness (schizophrenia, etc.) happens in the early twenties. It just also happens that each of these young men were in their early twenties. This isn't rocket science.....this isn't government running amok.....this is national defense. Is it not as important to protect our citizens from domestic threats as well as foreign? Same goes for our prison systems that have been privatized and incarceration has become profitable. The #1 lobby against medical marijuana right now is the private prison system because they understand their profits would take a hit....no pun intended.
