War is hell, stated Union General William Tecumseh Sherman.
This he said while savagely laying waste to every city in Georgia during his infamous "March to the Sea", a devastating act of total war that brought the South to its knees in the deeper Cotton States.
The gamble paid off for the Union Army and the country, as the Confederacy lost all remaining resources for trade and support within its weakened ranks as well as abroad.
For today's veterans, though, the gamble that this country spent on them has rendering some diminishing returns, including a growing number of soldiers returning to civilian life, yet unable to cope with the strain and bitter memories of combat.
For a growing number of our returning troops, they have sought broken and imperfect therapy in addictive gambling, a behavior which sponsors a short burst of power for a psyche trying to undo or suppress painful recollections.
It is a raving shame that some many of our troops suffer as they do, returning from brutal scene of guerrilla warfare in far-reaching, alien lands. The enemies which this country is striving against have a diminished respect for human, not stopping short of exploding young children or putting mothers and other women in harm's way. The toll of taking on so ruthless a threat as Islamo-fascism resists comprehension for anyone who has only heard, and that obliquely, about the trying geographical and cultural conditions which are troops face in Afghanistan, Iraqi, and in other war-torn areas of the world.
So far, LA Weekly is the only medium which has revealed this slowly growing epidemic among our veterans. It's time that the United States brought our troops home. We have no right to persist in stationing our veterans in frustrated fronts where victory is undefined and elusive, where the ideal goal of nation-building has been exploded as a vain hoax, and where this country is sinking precious blood and treasure with little return on this nation's safety and respect in the world.