Why should anyone be surprised?  If there is any surprise, it would only be that it doesn’t happen more often.  Furthermore the leadership of the military and the leadership of Congress don’t give a damn.  They even cover up the deeds of these trained murderers.  They call people “traitors” who dare to have the courage to speak out against the crimes committed by the US military.  American soldiers going berserk and killing people? Does no one remember history?  Does no one remember Mai Lai? Then there is the Afghanistan container massacre–another huge coverup by  members of Congress, the White House and the US military.

The WhiteHouse wives and Congress might work to see that the DOD changes their definition of “abuse.”  The Department of Defense divides abuse into three categories:  severe physical abuse, moderate physical abuse and mild physical abuse.  The DoD characterizations are inconsistent with the commonly held characterizations of domestic violence. A Dod prerequisite to be characterized as severe physical abuse is major physical injury requiring inpatient medical treatment or causing temporary or permanent physical disability or disfigurement. A strangulation case in the civilian community is considered very dangerous whereas in the military it might be defined as “mild” or “moderate” abuse. As a result, 69% of military domestic violence cases were reported in 1999 were “mild” and only 6% were reported as “severe”.

Since 2001, thousands of wives and girlfriends have been assaulted at the hands of the soldiers they loved.   In January of 2009 Katie Couricinvestigated a growing crisis in the U.S. military: the staggering numbers of military wives who have been beaten, raped or even killed since the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan began. And behind those statistics are the faces of many survivors. Katie spoke with one military wife, Jessacia Patton, about how her husband changed in Iraq, the ensuing abuse … and how the military failed to help.

The military takes citizens, strips them of their humanity, and teaches them to be killing machines.  John Steinbeck described the process chillingly well over 50 years ago in his novel East of Eden:

The Best Description of “Soldiering” that you’ll ever read as a father explains to his son about the process of “soldering.”

“Cyrus explained softly to Adam the nature of a soldier.  Look now–in all of history men have been taught that killing of men is an evil thing not to be countenanced.  Any man who kills must be destroyed because this is the worst sin we know.  And them we take a soldier and put murder in his hands and we say to him, “Use it wisely.”  We put no check on him.  Go out and kill as many of a certain kind or classification of your brothers as you can.  And we will reward you for it. , , ,You’ll go in soon now–you’ve come of age.”

“I don’t want to,” Adam said quickly.

“. . . And I want to tell you so you won’t be surprised.  They’ll first strip off your clothes, but they’ll go deeper than that.  They’ll shuck off any little dignity you have–you’ll lose what you think of as your decent right to live and to be let alone to live.  They’ll make you live and eat and sleep and shit close to other men.  And when they dress you up again you’ll not be able to tell yourself from the others.  You can’t even wear a scrap or pin a note on your breast to say, ‘This is me–separate from the rest.’ . . .After a while, you’ll thin no thought the others do not think.  You’ll know no word the others can’t say.  And you’ll do things because the others do them.  You’ll feel the danger in any difference whatever–a danger to the whole crowd of like-thinking, like-acting men.”

“What if I don’t?” Adam demanded.

” Yes,” Cyrus said, “sometimes that happens.  Once in a while there is a man who own’t do what is demanded of him, and do you know what happens?  The whole machine devotes itself coldly to the destruction of his difference.  They’ll beat your spirit and your nerves, your body and your mind, with iron rods until the dangerous difference goes out of you.  and if you can’t finally given in, they’ll vomit you up and leave you stinking up outside–neither part of themselves nor yet free.  It’s better to fall in with them.  A thing so triumphantly illogical, so beautifully senseless as an army can’t allow a question to weaken it.”

It’s time more people started telling the truth about the military and who they are really defending–the investments of the investor class.