Ghosts of Childhood's Past

I was putting my daughter to bed one night,

when she was around two.

She said, “Mommy, who’s that?”

“Who’s what?” I asked.

“Those people talking to me, in my closet. Who is that?”

I just about shit myself.

-- Unknown

It was a dark and stormy night... I was seven years old and was being allowed to stay up and watch Peter Lorre, Robert Alda, and Andrea King in the 1946 horror film, The Beast with Five Fingers.  I would soon be following it with such classics as The House on Haunted Hill, The Haunting of Hell House, and Thirteen Ghosts.  Thirteen years later I would find myself working for military intelligence.

I entertained no thoughts of mystery concerning my occasional conversations with fellow intelligence personnel about creative ways to make an enemy talk; I knew what made my skin crawl and it wasn't "waterboarding."  Waterboarding is interrogation amateur night; a hazing technique performed by college fraternities and now outlawed by universities.  In the movies you see interrogators make a grand display of laying out their numerous shiny and sharp, tools of the trade, the trade which nullifies all your human rights, usually because you've dared to nullify someone else's. These interrogators go through way more trouble than one would think necessary in order to extract information, and talk way too much about it beforehand.

I say let's simplify the procedure, especially in combat situations:  Give me a simple scalpel, a large mirror, and a gag.  I really don't care if the blade is sterile, and I'm feeling peckish so... bring me pastrami on rye with lots of mustard since this may take a while.  There won't be much conversation as they'll be wearing the gag and watching everything in the mirror, hence the sound of muffled screams.  Oh, and no witnesses, please, as this is the stuff of Congressional committees more interested in protecting our enemies than our saving  own personnel, so... don't let the door hit you in the ass on your way out. 

A PhD in child psychology and a million dollar grant isn't necessary, I suspect what a child is subjected to, or experiences on their own, has great bearing on the ghosts they bring with them into adulthood.  I also suspect this is why I shy away from horror movies today.  One can only stare into the abyss so long.  But this is what it takes to keep a country safe and secure,  These are horrors the common citizen has a right to know, but doesn't really want to hear until it hits the front page of the Times and they scream in mock offense.

“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.” 

-- Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), philosopher

Where men are concerned, parent's used to raise them.  It was a matter of pride for a father to bring his son into adulthood and show off the man his son had become.  I think that this idea of manhood has morphed into education, stock portfolios, and job positioning.  Gone are the real men of yesteryear that went to war and came back to live full productive lives.  We no longer seem to raise men to be soldiers.  Is this a good thing?

Men and women are now fighting kinder, gentler, wars.  They now go into battle with one hand tied behind their back with "rules of engagement."  Do we still build capable soldiers, or are we molding ambassadors to throw at the enemy like so much fodder?  If we are, this is not the brave soldiers fault.  This is the fault of their parents, our government, courts, and trial lawyers.  God forbid parents bring their children up able to survive in today's world.  God forbid we touch, or verbally abuse a soldier as training to keep them alive.  We wouldn't want to hurt their precious sensitivities after all.  Do we really prefer seeing them come home in body bags rather than hurt their feelings for a pitiful few weeks of basic training?  Better we give them participation awards they can wear proudly into battle against an enemy that relishes cutting their heads off as sport.  

As for me, "I love the smell of napalm in the morning" and God bless "Old Blood and Guts," General George S. Patton, Jr.  If you go into battle ill prepared to do anything less than kill the enemy, you should stay home and learn their language so you can assimilate all the easier after they kick your ass.  Is our new strategy is to come up with better weapons, unmanned weapons, as a much more expensive yet efficient way to fight war, or would it seem an admission that we no longer have a military of people mentally fit to fight the monsters of this world on their own turf?  Is it better to lose our children trying to win hearts and minds of our enemy, or should we simply kill them all and let God sort them out?

War changes people, it always has and, God willing, it always will.  It is a way of reminding ourselves we don't want to wage war.  If war is good for anything, however, it is a test of soldiers to go into battle and prove their mettle, their ability to preserve their freedom and way of life, to protect all they hold dear.  We send our young people to war and we're supposed to get back adults prepared to carry our country forward.  Instead we, for the most part, get back emotionally broken, psychologically and physically broken, young people.  But, then, that yearned for success all depends on a quality of training where we can separate the wheat from the chaff before we send them off to die.  Today we seem content to litter the battlefields and hospitals with too much of our brave kids that we probably should have never been sent to fight.

If you battle monsters, you don't always become a monster. But you aren't entirely human anymore, either.

-- Jonathan Maberry, author

The monsters of childhood's past we bring with us into adulthood.  For some, we use our personal monsters, we need these personal monsters; to fight the real monsters of our adult reality, those Nazis, ISIS, insane criminals and sociopaths which lay in wait at the gates to our adult nightmares.  Writer Alice Sebold said these "murderers are not monsters, they're men. And that's the most frightening thing about them.”  Do our monsters need to be more frightening and capable than theirs?  I wonder.  We are, all of us, monsters to some degree even if it's just in the knowledge of what we let others do to secure our safety and freedom.

There is no denying that Hitler and Stalin are alive today... they are waiting for us to forget, because this is what makes possible the resurrection of these two monsters.

-- Simon Wiesenthal, Holocaust survivor

Editor's Note 

(re: disclaimer cum "get out of jail free" card) 

Before you go getting your panties in a bunch, it is essential to understand that this is just an opinion site and, as such, can be subjected to scrutiny by anyone with a differing opinion. It doesn't make either opinion any more right or wrong than the other. An opinion, presented in this context, is a way of inciting others to think and, hopefully, to form opinions of their own, if they haven't already done so. This is also why, occasionally, I will present an "opinion" just to stir an emotional pot. Where it may sound like I agree with the statements made, I'm more interested in getting others to consider another viewpoint. 

It is my fervent hope that we keep open and active minds when reading opinions and then engaging in peaceful, constructive, discussion in an arena of mutual respect concerning the opinions put forth. After over twenty years with military intelligence, I have come to believe engaging each other in this manner and in this arena is the way we will learn tolerance and respect for differing beliefs, cultures, and viewpoints.

We all fall from grace, some more often than others; it is part of being human. God's test for us is what we do afterward, and what we learn from the experience.

Pastor Tony spent 22 years with Air Force Intelligence as a planner, analyst, briefer, and instructor. He is founder of the Congregation for Religious Tolerance and author/editor of the Congregation's official blog site, "The Path," which offers a vehicle for commentary and guidance concerning one's own personal, spiritual, path toward peace and the final destination.