General William Odom portrays the real damage inflicted upon the U.S. Military by the Bush position. The psychological profile of all returning Service personnel, including from Afghanistan, is quite bad for the Military as a Whole. German medical records from WWII are Past records of the dangers of continuous combat. I had to utilize a Nebraska Farm boy adage, but returning Servicemen are ‘Wind-broke’ horses; they have been overworked to the place where they are psychologically empty. I will try to give you some sense of what I mean.

A primary impulse in Troops is the sense they will achieve some type of victory–in a military or other Social achievement. The greatest danger to morale must be a Return to an area of operations after a Leave or Absence, only to find that nothing has changed; or it being worse in an assigned Tour of duration. If things have worsened in a military sense, then the returned Serviceman feeds a State of defeatism within his own mind; generally reinforced by the commentary of the other Servicemen in his Unit. Prospect of lengthy duration of exposure to danger leads these Servicemen to abandon any Mission Goals or Rules of Engagement which inflicts a greater risk on the Unit. This is a relevant fact, no matter how compelling the Mission Statement may be as a National Priority.

Military leadership can only worsen this Situation when they try to exhort greater Risk-bearing from the Service personnel; said individuals, already feeling victimized by the process of their Return, focus on the insensitivity of such leadership with a belief that Command will use them until they are killed. The Problem extends beyond the immediate Concerns of the Area of Operations, because Service personnel who have abandoned belief in Command leadership because of the intrinsic danger, will never again exhibit belief in that leadership. The End-Result will be the necessity to raise a completely new Military force absent the disruptive elements that these Veterans have become. The U.S. Military had similar experience during the mid and later 1970s, where ‘sour’ Personnel had to be weeded from the Main Force. lgl