Back when I was a hard chargin' Lance Corporal in the Marine Corps Reserve, a barber who was cutting my hair gave me this book, Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character. He said if I ever went to war, that I should read this book before going, to help me survive the emotional scars.
One of the things in the book that struck me was the problem a lot of vets had in dealing with the dead. Often grunts would become far more loyal to their dead comrades than to those who were still living. This loyalty to the dead combined with an overt hatred toward the enemy was crucial in the undoing of the individual grunt's character. These two facets of the defiled character often led a grunt to a berserk state, killing and destroying with reckless abandon without regard for the rest of his unit.
This analysis could be applied to our entire nation. Out of "loyalty" to the dead of 911, the US has become less loyal to those who are still living: airport security, elimination of due process, invasions of sovereign nations, bombing of innocent civilians. Our dead in Iraq could now be used to garner emotional support for an invasion of Iran and Syria. "Lincoln's use of the war dead to sanctify revolutionary change laid the emotional foundation for American nationalism." America's character, from Lincoln to now, has been defiled to the point of the berserk state.
