Compassionate Combat

[tnbutterfly - Mary, BSN]

allnurses is participating in the virtual AACN -NTI conference this week.  We have enjoyed meeting some of our members in person as we attended the conference every year for more than a decade. But COVID got in the way.  Last year the conference was canceled.  This year is the first year AACN has hosted a virtual conference,  While it doesn't provide quite the exhilarating experience as coming together in person, it is great to connect in this way.

Dr. Anthony Fauci was the featured speaker at yesterday's Super Session.  He had plenty of words of admiration and appreciation for nurses as well as words of wisdom and hope for the future.

There is usually a Nurses Out on Wednesdays, but tonight it will be Nurses Night In with Keith Urban.  Too bad this is not in person...

One of the songs that was shared with the attendees is "Compassionate Combat".  I want to share this with all of you.  We are in this together as we continue to fight the war... 

Thank you for your heroic efforts that are "all in the day of a nurse".

 

[gere7404, BSN, RN]

Compassionate Combat? it’s insulting to actual combat veterans and the local nationals who suffered through living in an actual war zone to compare the last year to a war. 

 

[GrumpyRN, NP]

On 5/27/2021 at 12:27 PM, gere7404 said:

Compassionate Combat? it’s insulting to actual combat veterans and the local nationals who suffered through living in an actual war zone to compare the last year to a war. 

 

Insulting to blah de blah de blah!

I don't know what you have been doing for the past year but nurses I know have been fighting to save patients. So yes they are in combat. Combat with a virus, with stupid government that make all the wrong decisions at all the wrong times and try to diminish the virus resulting in huge amounts of preventable deaths.

They are at war with the anti-maskers, anti-vaxxers, the downright lies that are spreading and all the stupid people who think "it is just a flu" and carry on regardless.

Every American in the forces is/was there by choice so knew what they were getting into. Obviously I exclude those before 1973 who were conscripted. In the UK conscription ended in 1960. Not one nurse signed up for the covid pandemic but stepped up anyway and did their best, often in horrific and very substandard conditions.

So yes, a little song to help people is not insulting to anyone.

[Hannahbanana, BSN, MSN]

I don't work in hospitals anymore-- am actially going in to be a patient in one in a few days-- but I remember really well that nobody wrote us songs when we were the front line for AIDS when it was an untreatable death sentence. We saw horrible deaths all the time; wept when our patients had nobody but us; had colleagues who wouldn't allow lovers in at the end "because family only"-- when family had disowned the dying men; had our own families scream at us when we said of course we were going back to work tomorrow; lost fiances and friends who feared for themselves because we did.

This song made me cry for my brother and sisters who are out there now, and brought that all back to me, and made me cry all over again. It's always nurses, isn't it. We have more to fight than mere diseases.

[gere7404, BSN, RN]

10 hours ago, GrumpyRN said:

Insulting to blah de blah de blah!

I don't know what you have been doing for the past year but nurses I know have been fighting to save patients. So yes they are in combat. Combat with a virus, with stupid government that make all the wrong decisions at all the wrong times and try to diminish the virus resulting in huge amounts of preventable deaths.

They are at war with the anti-maskers, anti-vaxxers, the downright lies that are spreading and all the stupid people who think "it is just a flu" and carry on regardless.

Every American in the forces is/was there by choice so knew what they were getting into. Obviously I exclude those before 1973 who were conscripted. In the UK conscription ended in 1960. Not one nurse signed up for the covid pandemic but stepped up anyway and did their best, often in horrific and very substandard conditions.

So yes, a little song to help people is not insulting to anyone

 

The 30 months I served in Iraq as an infantryman was nothing compared to what nurses went through the last year with Covid, in retrospect. I thought knowing how driving over the body parts of a crowd of more than 50 people killed by a suicide vest borne IED feels under the suspension of my humvee, or having to shoot machine guns at children because the bottle theyre playing with on the side of the road looks like it could have been an RKG3 grenade, hearing the screams of families as you kicked down their door in the middle of the night, ravaged their entire household for guns and bombs but didn’t find anything but stole their dad after beating him and putting a sandbag on their head to take to a prison camp forever anyway, or standing in formation yet again hearing another one of your friends name called for roll that you watched become chunks of meat when an EFP shred him out of existence and he can’t respond “present” like the rest of everyone else standing there stifling back tears because his body is on the way back home for a closed casket funeral was bad, but it pales to having to put someone with a cough on Bipap, or knowing a 92 year old with heart failure and COPD isn't going to make it even with ventilation because of covid. That’s TRUE combat. Sorry if the comparison offended me.

I forgot, nurses are health care hero’s on the front line. I thank you all for your service, and I’ll toast this Memorial Day to all you covid warriors! 
 

 

[GrumpyRN, NP]

9 hours ago, gere7404 said:

 

The 30 months I served in Iraq as an infantryman was nothing compared to what nurses went through the last year with Covid, in retrospect. I thought knowing how driving over the body parts of a crowd of more than 50 people killed by a suicide vest borne IED feels under the suspension of my humvee, or having to shoot machine guns at children because the bottle theyre playing with on the side of the road looks like it could have been an RKG3 grenade, hearing the screams of families as you kicked down their door in the middle of the night, ravaged their entire household for guns and bombs but didn’t find anything but stole their dad after beating him and putting a sandbag on their head to take to a prison camp forever anyway, or standing in formation yet again hearing another one of your friends name called for roll that you watched become chunks of meat when an EFP shred him out of existence and he can’t respond “present” like the rest of everyone else standing there stifling back tears because his body is on the way back home for a closed casket funeral was bad, but it pales to having to put someone with a cough on Bipap, or knowing a 92 year old with heart failure and COPD isn't going to make it even with ventilation because of covid. That’s TRUE combat. Sorry if the comparison offended me.

I forgot, nurses are health care hero’s on the front line. I thank you all for your service, and I’ll toast this Memorial Day to all you covid warriors! 
 

 

Oh dear. 

First thing...

Are you OK? Are you all right in yourself? Are you getting help with the PTSD? Not being sarcastic, genuinely concerned as that is a lot to unpack and you do not seem to be coping.

 

Second thing...

What you are describing are war crimes. Shooting children, kidnapping and beating civilians are all war crimes. It also explains why more British troops were killed by American troops than Iraqi troops. This kind of thinking lead to Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.

The story you have written above should not be told in public, rather it should be told in the The International Court of Justice in The Hague. This is why Americans are hated in the middle east. I repeat, they are war crimes.

 

To end I am going to repeat my first part. I hope you are getting the help you need and that you have good social and psychological backup.

Take care.

[guest1163268]

10 hours ago, gere7404 said:

 

The 30 months I served in Iraq as an infantryman was nothing compared to what nurses went through the last year with Covid, in retrospect. I thought knowing how driving over the body parts of a crowd of more than 50 people killed by a suicide vest borne IED feels under the suspension of my humvee, or having to shoot machine guns at children because the bottle theyre playing with on the side of the road looks like it could have been an RKG3 grenade, hearing the screams of families as you kicked down their door in the middle of the night, ravaged their entire household for guns and bombs but didn’t find anything but stole their dad after beating him and putting a sandbag on their head to take to a prison camp forever anyway, or standing in formation yet again hearing another one of your friends name called for roll that you watched become chunks of meat when an EFP shred him out of existence and he can’t respond “present” like the rest of everyone else standing there stifling back tears because his body is on the way back home for a closed casket funeral was bad, but it pales to having to put someone with a cough on Bipap, or knowing a 92 year old with heart failure and COPD isn't going to make it even with ventilation because of covid. That’s TRUE combat. Sorry if the comparison offended me.

I forgot, nurses are health care hero’s on the front line. I thank you all for your service, and I’ll toast this Memorial Day to all you covid warriors! 
 

 

Just wondering, what were the rationales for those wars? 

Who did it benefit? Did you not know when you signed up, that you would have to likely commit atrocities for useless political issues? 

I knew that as a nurse that I was likely going to see people die in horrible circumstances or see kids suffering from terrible illnesses, I didn't know however that I would have to listen to pastors and rabbis, rationalize that it was God's will, promptly forcing me to leave medical, before I ended up in jail! 

I'm in Psych now and I can't do adolescents because sometimes sexual and physical abuse are the reasons with the perpetrator still occasionally being allowed to visit the victims. I rarely ever cry because I'm a cold bastard, but kids, I draw the line! 

Yeah, nurses are HEROES and are in combat situations everyday, from the moment they walk into their work environment! We also can't relieve our stress by shooting people and lying about it! I don't believe for a second, that soldiers and police haven't got an itch to kill people! And anyone who are either and said they didn't realize are idiots and even more dangerous than the killers wearing uniforms! You work in the sewers, you will get *** on you sometime! 

[gere7404, BSN, RN]

On 5/29/2021 at 3:18 AM, GrumpyRN said:

Oh dear. 

First thing...

Are you OK? Are you all right in yourself? Are you getting help with the PTSD? Not being sarcastic, genuinely concerned as that is a lot to unpack and you do not seem to be coping.

 

Second thing...

What you are describing are war crimes. Shooting children, kidnapping and beating civilians are all war crimes. It also explains why more British troops were killed by American troops than Iraqi troops. This kind of thinking lead to Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.

The story you have written above should not be told in public, rather it should be told in the The International Court of Justice in The Hague. This is why Americans are hated in the middle east. I repeat, they are war crimes.

 

To end I am going to repeat my first part. I hope you are getting the help you need and that you have good social and psychological backup.

Take care.

I cope just fine, I just can’t stand the self aggrandizing of nurses making the comparison that covid is anything like combat. It’s not. Nothing I described were war crimes, they are just every day realities of being in an ACTUAL WAR.

which is exactly my point, if you think those situations sound criminal, you don’t know what combat actually is and shouldn’t casually throw the word around and make stupid comparisons.

 

[toomuchbaloney]

1 hour ago, gere7404 said:

I cope just fine, I just can’t stand the self aggrandizing of nurses making the comparison that covid is anything like combat. It’s not. Nothing I described were war crimes, they are just every day realities of being in an ACTUAL WAR.

which is exactly my point, if you think those situations sound criminal, you don’t know what combat actually is and shouldn’t casually throw the word around and make stupid comparisons.

 

Yeah...they sound criminal.  

[chare]

1 hour ago, gere7404 said:

I cope just fine, I just can’t stand the self aggrandizing of nurses making the comparison that covid is anything like combat. It’s not. ...

[...]

I could agree with you, to a point, on this.  

1 hour ago, gere7404 said:

... Nothing I described were war crimes, they are just every day realities of being in an ACTUAL WAR.

[...]

However, this is where you lose me.  If you were involved in this ...

On 5/28/2021 at 8:43 PM, gere7404 said:

... or having to shoot machine guns at children because the bottle theyre playing with on the side of the road looks like it could have been an RKG3 grenade, hearing the screams of families as you kicked down their door in the middle of the night, ravaged their entire household for guns and bombs but didn’t find anything but stole their dad after beating him and putting a sandbag on their head to take to a prison camp forever anyway, ...

[...]

... then I think perhaps you're the one that doesn't know what a war crime actually is.

1 hour ago, gere7404 said:

I cope just fine, I just can’t stand the self aggrandizing of nurses making the comparison that covid is anything like combat. It’s not. ...

[...]

I could agree with you, to a point, on this.  

1 hour ago, gere7404 said:

... Nothing I described were war crimes, they are just every day realities of being in an ACTUAL WAR.

[...]

However, this is where you lose me.  If you were involved in this ...

On 5/28/2021 at 8:43 PM, gere7404 said:

... or having to shoot machine guns at children because the bottle theyre playing with on the side of the road looks like it could have been an RKG3 grenade, hearing the screams of families as you kicked down their door in the middle of the night, ravaged their entire household for guns and bombs but didn’t find anything but stole their dad after beating him and putting a sandbag on their head to take to a prison camp forever anyway, ...

[...]

... then I think perhaps you're the one that doesn't know what a war crime actually is.

[gere7404, BSN, RN]

2 hours ago, toomuchbaloney said:

Yeah...they sound criminal.  

It’s almost like warfare is the worst thing that humanity does

almost seems silly comparing the last year to that doesn’t it? 

[GrumpyRN, NP]

13 hours ago, gere7404 said:

Nothing I described were war crimes, they are just every day realities of being in an ACTUAL WAR.

From the United Nations definition of War Crimes.

I have abridged this list to keep it readable.

Please particularly see the parts I have put in bold.

 

War Crimes;

The Court shall have jurisdiction in respect of war crimes in particular when committed as part of a plan or policy or as part of a large-scale commission of such crimes.

For the purpose of this Statute, ‘war crimes’ means:

Grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, namely, any of the following acts against persons or property protected under the provisions of the relevant Geneva Convention:

Wilful killing

Torture or inhuman treatment, including biological experiments;

Wilfully causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or health;

Extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly;

Wilfully depriving a prisoner of war or other protected person of the rights of fair and regular trial;

Unlawful deportation or transfer or unlawful confinement;

Taking of hostages.

 

Other serious violations of the laws and customs applicable in international armed conflict, within the established framework of international law, namely, any of the following acts:

Intentionally directing attacks against the civilian population as such or against individual civilians not taking direct part in hostilities;

Intentionally directing attacks against civilian objects, that is, objects which are not military objectives;

Intentionally launching an attack in the knowledge that such attack will cause incidental loss of life or injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects or widespread, long-term and severe damage to the natural environment which would be clearly excessive in relation to the concrete and direct overall military advantage anticipated;

Attacking or bombarding, by whatever means, towns, villages, dwellings or buildings which are undefended and which are not military objectives;

Killing or wounding a combatant who, having laid down his arms or having no longer means of defence, has surrendered at discretion;

Killing or wounding treacherously individuals belonging to the hostile nation or army;

Destroying or seizing the enemy's property unless such destruction or seizure be imperatively demanded by the necessities of war;

Pillaging a town or place, even when taken by assault;

Committing outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment;

Violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture;

Committing outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment;

Taking of hostages;

The passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgement pronounced by a regularly constituted court, affording all judicial guarantees which are generally recognized as indispensable.

Paragraph 2 (c) applies to armed conflicts not of an international character and thus does not apply to situations of internal disturbances and tensions, such as riots, isolated and sporadic acts of violence or other acts of a similar nature.

Other serious violations of the laws and customs applicable in armed conflicts not of an international character, within the established framework of international law, namely, any of the following acts:

Intentionally directing attacks against the civilian population as such or against individual civilians not taking direct part in hostilities;

Intentionally directing attacks against personnel, installations, material, units or vehicles involved in a humanitarian assistance or peacekeeping mission in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations, as long as they are entitled to the protection given to civilians or civilian objects under the international law of armed conflict;

Intentionally directing attacks against buildings dedicated to religion, education, art, science or charitable purposes, historic monuments, hospitals and places where the sick and wounded are collected, provided they are not military objectives;

 

Some examples of prohibited acts include: murder; mutilation, cruel treatment and torture; taking of hostages; intentionally directing attacks against the civilian population; intentionally directing attacks against buildings dedicated to religion, education, art, science or charitable purposes, historical monuments or hospitals; pillaging; rape, sexual slavery, forced pregnancy or any other form of sexual violence; conscripting or enlisting children under the age of 15 years into armed forces or groups or using them to participate actively in hostilities.

 

https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/war-crimes.shtml

 

---

Now read through your story again.

 

For a fuller list of American war crimes have a look at this;

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_war_crimes#Iraq_War

 

I want you to understand that I understand the problems you are facing but please do not come onto a nursing forum and try to tell a European about war. Especially a Brit. We have had conflicts aplenty and you do not know me or what I have done. Let me just say this, if the UK had fought in Viet Nam I would have been part of the forces there and we also had Northern Ireland for which troops just last month were in court accused of shooting civilians. I missed the Falklands because I was doing Nurse Training and I was too old for Iraq and Afghanistan.

Again, take care and remember, help is available.