Post-traumatic Stress Disorder

I read about post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) from a health website called healthyplace. The article says that PTSD is caused when "the person experienced, witnessed, or was confronted with an event or events that involved actual or threatened death or serious injury, or a threat to the physical integrity of self or others and the person's response involved intense fear, helplessness, or horror." This happens when people go to war. PTSD is a serious psychological effect of war because people have to kill kids, they have to make a moral effort of killing people, and they are constantly scared they are going to get killed by Iraqi troops. They can get killed, that is the most helpless feeling. Having a bunch of guys shooting at you makes you very scared which is a major cause of PTSD. Also, the Iraqi people are used to seeing people shooting and reshooting is easier for them because it is part of their life, some soldiers go to war who have never seen death and they are not used to it and it is very horrible for them. US people are not used to living with war and death. The worst thing that happened to the USA was September 11th and that only happened in New York. In Iraq war and terrorism happens in every single town on a regular basis. Soldiers are just people, they are people and they are going to be scared when they see death and war. Going to Iraq is like suicide becuase they go they get shot and the bullets go through people and some people are USA marines, it doesn't matter how strong or how much training you go through, they are not used to receiving bullets. They are not made of steel and that scares them and gives them a sense of helplessness and that helplessness is a serious cause of PTSD which is a psychological effect of war.

Sad rape story

I read a very sad story from CNN about four US soldiers who raped a 14 year old girl and murdered her and her family in Iraq. There was another story, also on CNN about the soldier's punishments. Rape and murder are not normal behavior for men. The family that you know and men who are not in Iraq wouldn't think to do this horrible thing. For example, your brother wouldn't normally go with his friends and dress in black and break into somebody's house and rape a girl and then kill her family. The reason that these four US soldiers did this is because the psychological effects that war has had on them. War makes those soldiers feel that they rule the world with their guns, and that they are like the king of Rome compared to the Iraqi people. That for them, the Iraqi people were lower than them. They had no regard when they raped the girl. The United Nations has agreed on a set of Universal Laws of Human Rights which all countries should follow. One effect of war is the disregard of Human Rights for all people. This story is a great example of how war effects people. These four soldiers went into someone's home and killed the whole family. Raping the oldest daughter in the family who was only 14 years old. The poor girl was Muslim and Muslims are very conservative with boys and girls being seprate. For her, it was against her morality. She must have felt betrayed by the human race. These soldiers had no regard for her religion, her morality, or her life. This is a psychological effect of war. If those men were not in the Iraqi war, they never would have done that to a family. This is especially terrible because the Muslims are a group of people who do not let their women talk to men in private so it is a great dishonor for her, her family, and her country to have those men use her body like that.

Child Soldiers in Afghanistan

I read an article from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs about the child soldiers in Afghanistan. Even though the Taliban was kicked out of Afghanistan by the USA, there are still military groups that are fighting to get power of Afghanistan. Those military groups are recruiting children to fight their battles. Many kids in Afghanistan have to join the armies to get money for thier families. They get paid for fighting wars. The article says "The reasons are obvious: children are cheaper to employ, slow to question authority and often quick to prove themselves in Afghanistan's gun-dominated macho society." That is why there are so many child soldiers in Afghanistan, there are 8,000 child soldiers there when the United Nations last did a check. The reason there are child soldiers in Afghanistan is because the USA blow up Afghanistan after the September 11th bombings. USA dropped bombs on all of Afghanistan and ruined the whole country. There were no more houses, or jobs, or anything. Then the kids had nothing to do besides become a child soldier. Many of their friends and family died so it makes them very angry and want to have revenge on the USA. Some of them want to have support since their family is dead and they can get support from the armies if they become fighters.I am intrested in what does Usa army is doing wrong.

Child Soldiers

I found an interesting article by Peter W. Singer called Facing Saddam's Child Soldiers. It was written in 2003 but I think it is a good article because it talks about child soldiers being a regular part of war in today's world. It also talks about what Saddam Hussein did to make it possible for child soldiers to be part of his battles. At the time the article was written more than half of Iraq's population was below the age of 18. Saddam Hussein trained children how to fight in wars. He taught them how to fight by having 3 week long training camps in the summer for boys. The boys who went to this camp some were only 10 years old. They had to do drills to learn how to use weapons and how to be in warfare. Saddam Hussein made the boys train so that they could politically defend him when a war would occur. So Saddam Hussein knew that a war was coming much before USA even thought of invading. Saddam had these camps for boys starting in the 1990s. I think that these boys that Saddam trained are the ones fighting against the USA right now because the only thing these boys know how to do is fight. They have been told that Westerners are bad, they don't care about you, they will kill you, they hate your religion, they won't have mercy, kill them before they kill you. The article also says that USA military usually wouldn't kill kids, but that in a war in Iraq they might be forced to because they are going to be fighting against the kids. I think that the USA military are told to kill the enemy even if the enemy are kids. If they don't kill the kids in Iraq, they kids will kill them. That is why some of the vets that come back from Iraq are so traumatized and feel guilty. They think that their wives and girlfriends might think they are monsters because they killed kids in Iraq. The article also says that US troops have to remember that not all kids are soldiers. There is the chance that US soldiers will just start killing any kids they see because they will think they are going to kill them.Next I am goind to reserch chlidern in afganistan

Veterans try talking about trauma

On BBC News I found a very interesting article by Richard Allen Greene called Veterans try talking about trauma. After the article there was a place where people could write in comments telling about the trauma their families had experienced because of war. The best part of the article is the comments that people wrote because you could hear the different ways that war affected people from all over the world. For example, Haider from Bagdad, Iraq wrote that for three days he and his family were stuck in his house while the Republican Guards bombed their neighborhood. He found his neighbor's body parts on the roof of his house because a bomb blew his body parts away. The daughters of Haider have nightmares and they cry anytime they hear loud noise because it reminds them of the sounds of the loud bombs that happened outside thier house. This experience can cause mental disease. People from many different places in the world responded to the article. There were people writing from Iraq, United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Holland, Norway, Sweden, Australia, and Egypt. Cheng from Canada wrote about a patient that killed a young 14 year old child in Vietnam and now he has nightmares about watching the kid die and also he can never eat meat because he shot the boy in the head. He feels like he is a murderer even though he only was a soldier doing what the government told him to do. The poor guy has suffered a lot and we have to admire him in a way for all his suffering. Marwan from Iraq had lived in war since he was six years old because of Iran, Kuwait and the UN sanctions. Living in constant war caused him not to fear death because he saw it everyday. People dying was part of his life, he thought that it was natural and so he doesn't have fear of death. He is also always worried about gas, water and food because they had to live sometimes without any because of the wars. He is very controlling and always trying to plan his life to make sure he has gas, water and food. Another comment from John in England said that he fought in the Gulf War with his twin brother and the war made his brother lose his marriage. He thinks that all ex-service people are socially strange because it is a coping mechanism to deal with what they have done. People who go to war feel guilty because they have killed people. The president tells them to kill people so they have no control they have to do what the president says. They have to live with it and think that when war is over I won't kill anyone again and I am not a bad person. They can do community service to feel better. I am going to research about effects of war on children and especially child soldiers. I am interested in researching child soldiers because I am in MUN and it is the topic in my committee. I have already learned a few things about child soldiers like girls are used as sex slaves, some boys are told to rape girls, some child soldiers have never had a normal life or family, there are about 300,000 child soldiers in the world, and Uganda, Sri Lanka, Colombia, Zimbabwe, East Timor, Somalia all have child soldiers.

Battling the Effects of War

InNewsweek, I found an article by Peg Tyre called Battling the Effects of War. The article is very interesting because it talks about the psychological disorders of people who come home from the Iraq War. Some of the most common psychological effects are post tramatic stress disorder that is a mental condition caused by extreme stress. It also makes soldiers hypervigiliance, insomnia, recurring nightmares, anxiety, mood disorders, depression, and intrusive thoughts. People who suffer from these conditions fall into drug and alcohol abuse, unemployment, homelessness and suicide very easily. The United States is trying to help these people by counseling, social workers, mental hospitals, outreach programs, mental health clinics, and psychiatric hospitals. Sometimes these programs don't work for example, "Jefferey Lucey hanged himself in the basement of his family home" one year after returning from Iraq. Sometimes soldiers become schizophrenic and die because of it.

effects of iraq war on USA

In USA today I found a intresting article by Rick Hampson about the effect of the Iraq war in USA. He mentions that there are many psychologic effects of war. The way people think, feel, and act is changed. Some people say that the war in Iraq has made them pray and cry. The war has changed the way some people view their spirituality. Some people think it is more important now to have a relationship with life because of the death they hear about everyday in Iraq. Veterans have mental disorders because of what they have seen and experienced in war. War has also affected veterans by making them feel guilty for what they have done. The patriotism in the United States has been affected because people feel that what they have done is good and others feel harshly about what their country has done in Iraq. Even Americans who are not fighting in the war are also affected. "Rose Gill, 56, of Round Rock, Texas, lost her Marine son Steven to an improvised bomb last July in Iraq. She lost her job three weeks later because she was too distraught to go back to work." It is very hard to lose a son, father, friend, and it is hard to get back to normal life when you have lost a loved one. "Jim Murphy, 60, counsels returning veterans who have mental problems because of what they saw." The article says that some Americans don't think they have been affected at all. "A majority of poll respondents say they have not sent a letter, e-mail, or care package to troops in Iraq." Even though the destructive bombing is not happening in the United States, it can still effect the people there. In USA people can see the images of violence on television and newspapers. They hear everyday about "...roadside bombings, military funerals, shattered mosques, wounded children..." Hearing about these things makes people feel sad and depressed. People can feel helpless because their country is doing such harm and they have never felt the same harm as Iraq is feeling. Other people think that USA is helping Iraq because Sadam Hussain was killing the Kurds.