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Bill presented with classic PTSD symptoms after a tour in Iraq. While deployed, Bill drove an armored vehicle. At the time, the resistance in Iraq utilized a strategy of sending a small child intothe road in front of an American convoy. When the lead vehicle for the convoy stopped in order not to run over the child, the rest of the convoy would have to stop, and the resistance would attack. So American drivers were told that, in the future, when a child is in the road in front of them, to not even slow down in order to protect the convoy. Bill drove over one of those children and was haunted by his action, hence his PTSD symptoms. I would like to make two points here. First, I think Bill’s symptoms clearly can be understood as a consequence of our not revering humanity in general. Rather than seeing people who disagree with us as having a legitimate alternative position,we see them as the “enemy” to be destroyed. We do not think of them as fathers and husbands, mothers and wives, or little children. Hence we find ourselves in a conflict where Bill winds up being diagnosed as mentally ill. This leads me to my second point. Who is the mentally ill person here: Bill, who is haunted by what he did, or some other driver who can run over a little child and not be haunted by his action (or the people who ordered Bill and others to engage in such actions)? (Or the culture that puts its young people in the position of needing to make such orders?) From Letras Mania