Marine Veteran Scott Ritter: "We have to stop worshiping war."

The reality of combat, he notes, is found in the smell of Veterans Hospital wards where war-ripped, deformed and incapacitated veterans exist in a cramped world.

“If you go to war you will be fundamentally broken. I’m broken.”

By Mark Taylor
DeMOCKracy (6/23/24)

American Marine combat veteran Scott Ritter is the former United Nations weapons inspector who called out the Cheney/G.W. Bush “weapons of mass destruction” lie that sent America into two decades of failed war, countless deaths and war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq. He knows war firsthand. He is also one of the best analysts of the current unraveling U.S. military and foreign relations clusterf*ck in Ukraine, Israel, the greater Middle East and China.

He did an extended interview with podcaster Sabby Sabbs Saturday (6/22) in which, among many critical issues, he discussed the recent illegal confiscation of his passport by the State Department as he was about to fly to Moscow for a conference where he was presenting at. As is usual with Ritter, all of it is worth listening to, but there is a 26-minute segment I urge you to watch in which he rips open the reality of military service in this sick, war mongering nation. The issue arose when Sabby brought up the recent Democratic Party-sponsored House bill for automatic military draft registration.

Much-needed dose of reality

The old Marine combat veteran steps forward to serve the American people with a much-needed dose of reality about the nature of military service, combat trauma and the complete inability of this nation to meet such challenges.

“We live in a world where we allow combat to be defined by computer games,” he says with disdain.

The reality of combat, he notes, is found in the smell of Veterans Hospital wards where war-ripped, deformed and incapacitated veterans exist in a cramped world of colostomy bags and diapers, bed-ridden isolation, chronic pain, drug addiction, lost relations, lost dreams and amputated lives.

In 2023, an average of 17 veterans committed suicide every day, a rate 57% higher than for non-veterans.

They are all — like pennies falling off the counter — the brushed-aside cost of doing the profitable business of our endless wars for Wall Street corporate profits.

I’m not a veteran, but I was privileged to provide a few short rounds of psychotherapy to several Iraq and Afghan combat veterans who were dealing with traumatic brain injury, and post-traumatic stress. They spoke of the combat, brutality and death they witnessed, experienced and was branded into their souls. Because of the small size of US forces, they had all suffered through multiple active combat deployments. One had survived three IED bombings of vehicles he was in and was suffering severe traumatic brain injury, for which there is no cure. He was in his mid-30s with a wife and two children.

As Ritter spoke passionately from his heart and experience, I heard echoes of those past clients.

In a country where only 0.4% of the population is in the military, most Americans have no personal or even family experience with the realities of active duty military life … and death. They have no idea.

As the genocidal psychopaths of our uniparty corporate political gang gin up wars and plan to throw our youth into the maw of the monster, I urge you to take a few minutes to listen to Ritter about the realities of herding our young people into the military as sacrifice to our immoral corporate wars.

Listen young people to one who knows what will confront and haunt you.

They are coming for you.

See through the lies.

Organize.

Resist.

The segment begins at the 28-minute mark.

1-hour, 24-minute video

The reality of combat, he notes, is found in the smell of Veterans Hospital wards where war-ripped, deformed and incapacitated veterans exist in a cramped world of colostomy bags and diapers, bed-ridden isolation, chronic pain, drug addiction, lost relations, lost dreams and amputated lives.