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Carlos,
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the Vietnam vet Marine
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who volunteered for three tours
and got shot up in every one.
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In 1971, he was medically retired
because he had so much shrapnel
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in his body that he was
setting off metal detectors.
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For the next 42 years, he suffered
from nightmares,
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extreme anxiety in public,
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isolation, depression.
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He self-medicated with alcohol.
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He was married and divorced three times.
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Carlos had post-traumatic stress disorder.
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Now, I became a psychologist to help
mitigate human suffering,
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and for the past 10 years, my target
has been the suffering caused by PTSD
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as experienced by veterans like Carlos.
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Until recently, the science of PTSD
just wasn't there,
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and so we didn't know what to do.
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We put some veterans on heavy drugs.
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Others we hospitalized and gave
generic group therapy,
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and others still we simply said to them,
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just go home and try to forget
about your experiences.
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More recently, we've tried therapy dogs,
wilderness retreats,
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many things which may
temporarily relieve stress
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but which don't actually eliminate
PTSD symptoms over the long term.
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But things have changed,
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and I am here to tell you that we
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can now eliminate PTSD,
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not just manage the symptoms,
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and in huge numbers of veterans,
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because new scientific research
has been able to show,
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objectively, repeatedly,
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which treatments actually
get rid of symptoms and which do not.
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Now as it turns out,
the best treatments for PTSD
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use many of the very same
training principles
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that the military uses
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in preparing its trainees for war.
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Now, making war,
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this is something that we are good at.
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We humans have been making war
since before we were even fully human,
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and since then we have gone from using
stone and sinew to developing
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the most sophisticated and devastating
weapons systems imaginable.
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And to enable our warriors
to use these weapons,
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we employ the most cutting edge
training methods.
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We are good at making war.
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And we are good at training
our warriors to fight.
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Yet when we consider the experience
of the modern day combat veteran,
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we begin to see that we
have not been as good
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at preparing them to come home.
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Why is that?
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Well, our ancestors lived
immersed in conflict,
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and they fought right where they lived.
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So until only very recently
in our evolutionary history,
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there was hardly a need to learn
how to come home from war,
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because we never really did.
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But thankfully today, most of humanity
lives in far more peaceable societies,
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and when there is conflict,
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we, especially in the United States,
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now have the technology to put
our warriors through advanced training,
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drop them into fight
anywhere on the globe,
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and when they're done,
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jet them back to peacetime suburbia.
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But just imagine for a moment
what this must feel like.
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I've spoken with veterans who have told me
that one day they're in
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a brutal firefight in Afghanistan
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where they saw carnage and death,
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and just three days later
they found themselves
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toting an ice chest
to their kid's soccer game.
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"Mindfuck" is the most common term.
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(Laughter)
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It's the most common term
I've heard to describe that experience.
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And that's exactly what that is,
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because while our warriors
spend countless hours training for war,
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we've only recently come to understand
that many require training
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on how to return to civilian life.
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Now, like any training, the best
PTSD treatments require repetition.
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In the military, we don't simply hand
trainees MK-19 automatic grenade launchers
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and say, here's a trigger,
here's some ammo, and good luck.
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No. We train them on the range
and in specific contexts,
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over and over and over
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until lifting their weapon
and engaging their target
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is so engrained into muscle memory
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that it can be performed
without even thinking
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even under the most stressful conditions
you can imagine.
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Now the same holds for training
base treatments.
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The first of these treatments
is cognitive therapy,
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and this is a kind
of mental recalibration.
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When veterans come home from war,
their way of mentally framing the world
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is calibrated to an immensely
more dangerous environment.
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So when you try to overlay
that mind frame
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onto a peacetime environment,
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you get problems.
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You begin drowning in worries
about dangers that aren't present.
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You begin not trusting family or friends,
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which is not to say that there are
no dangers in civilian life.
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There are.
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It's just that the probability
of encountering them
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compared to combat
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is astronomically lower.
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So we never advise veterans
to turn off caution completely.
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We do train them, however,
to adjust caution
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according to where they are.
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If you find yourself
in a bad neighborhood,
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you turn it up.
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Out to dinner with family?
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You turn it way down.
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We train veterans to be fiercely rational,
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to systematically gauge
the actual statistical probability
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of encountering, say, an IED
here in peacetime America.
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With enough practice,
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those recalibrations stick.
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The next of these treatments
is exposure therapy,
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and this is a kind of field training,
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and the fastest of the proven
effective treatments out there.
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You remember Carlos?
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This was the treatment that he chose,
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and so we started off
by giving him exercises,
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for him, challenging ones:
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going to a grocery store,
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going to a shopping mall,
going to a restaurant,
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sitting with his back to the door,
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and, critically,
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staying in these environments.
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Now, at first he was very anxious.
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He wanted to sit where he
could scan the room,
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where he could plan escape routes,
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where he could get his hands
on a makeshift weapon,
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and he wanted to leave, but he didn't.
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He remembered his training
in the Marine Corps
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and he pushed through his discomfort,
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and every time he did this, his anxiety
ratcheted down a little bit,
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and then a little bit more
and then a little bit more,
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until in the end, he had effectively
relearned how to sit
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in a public space
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and just enjoy himself.
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He also listened to recordings
of his combat experiences
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over and over and over.
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He listened until those memories
no longer generated any anxiety.
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He processed his memories so much
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that his brain no longer needed
to return to those experiences
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in his sleep.
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And when I spoke with him
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a year after treatment had finished,
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he told me,
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"Doc, this is the first time in 43 years
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that I haven't had nightmares."
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Now, this is different
than erasing a memory.
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Veterans will always remember
their traumatic experiences,
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but with enough practice, those memories
are no longer as raw
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or as painful as they once were.
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They don't feel emotionally
like they just happened yesterday,
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and that is an immensely
better place to be.
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But it's often difficult,
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and like any training,
it may not work for everybody,
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and there are trust issues.
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Sometimes I'm asked, "If you haven't
been there, Doc, how can you help me?"
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Which is understandable.
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But at the point of returning
to civilian life, you do not require
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somebody who has been there.
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You don't require training for operations
on the battlefield.
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You require training on how to come home.
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Now, for the past 10 years of my work,
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I have been exposed to detailed accounts
of the worst experiences
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that you can imagine, daily,
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and it hasn't always been easy.
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There have been times where I have
just felt my heart break,
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or I have absorbed too much.
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But these training-based treatments
work so well
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that whatever this work takes out of me,
it puts back even more,
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because I see people get better.
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I see people's lives transform.
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Carlos can now enjoy outings
with his grandchildren
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which is something that he couldn't
even do with his own children,
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and what's amazing to me
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is that after 43 years of suffering,
it only took him 10 weeks
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of intense training to get his life back.
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And when I spoke with him, he told me,
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"I know that I can't get those years back,
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but at least now, whatever days
that I have left on this Earth,
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I can live them in peace."
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And he also said, "I hope that these
younger veterans don't wait
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to get the help they need."
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And that's my hope too, because
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this life is short,
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and if you are fortunate enough
to have survived war
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or any kind of traumatic experience,
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you owe it to yourself
to live your life well,
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and you shouldn't wait to get
the training that you need
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to make that happen.
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Now, the best way of ending
human suffering caused by war
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is to never go to war,
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but we are just not there yet
as a species.
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Until we are, the mental suffering
that we create
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in our sons and in our daughters
when we send them off to fight
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can be alleviated.
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But we must ensure that the science,
that the energy level, that the value
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that we place on sending them
off to war is at very least mirrored
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in how well we prepare them
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to come back home to us.
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This much we owe them.
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Thank you.
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(Applause)