STRUGGLING TO UNDERSTAND...

Tonight everyone's talking about Ft Hood. I saw the news at a huge Sam's on a huge flat screen tv this afternoon and started crying in the aisle. Another horror and was it terrorism? I wondered, then took off thinking about the army.
I'm intrigued with the military because of what I've learned studying the Naval Air facilities in Dallas, but I cannot understand how average people endure military life. It would make me crazy the first day on the job. Think about it... All these thousands of mostly young people crowded together with no privacy, eating and sleeping communally in warehouse-like rooms, physically exhausted, learning to kill-and some say to hate or feel disgust toward the enemy. Then, shipped off in fear of never seeing loved ones again...not to mention death. Is this torture or what?
To me, a sensitive woman who never excelled in physical competition, it sounds totally dehumanizing and psyche disorganizing. When do they teach getting over war or how to stop killing when you get really mad or physically threatened after being exposed to the unimaginable.
Trauma changes wiring in the brain.
After reading about the military tonight and for the past couple of years, I want to ask WHAT DOES THE MILITARY ELITE/INFRASTRUCTURE REALLY CARE ABOUT? What is it, in truth, mainly about? Just try to answer that question in all the positive, patriotic ways you can, then evaluate what the military actually does.
Ex. Love America-pollute the land and refuse to clean up; love freedom-rank every person and regiment everything, give absolute commands all the time;
help humanity-kill and bomb, injure civilians, produce mental illness in own soldiers; free the oppressed-capture the oppressor/become the oppressor...It's a unique system alright - mostly well-intentioned, doing much good, but inflicting injury in several unintended directions while fulfilling its missions.
Sometimes being too much like what we hate causes what we hate/the enemy to grow so large and strong that we can't control it. We actually become what we hate and find we have more enemies than ever before, and have no real future but more fighting. (Could this be-kind of-what Ward Churchill meant, though he was accused of being-and probably meant to be - inflammatory and accusatory of the US as an aggressor?)* At any rate, something needs to end war if it can't be won and if fighting will not change the root conflict; then other ways of protecting our homeland can and must be found.
I admire and deeply appreciate the enlisted folks who put their lives on the line for freedom and for the folks back home, but I fear for their well-being. Their lives right now seem to be in the hands of those who design the military system - a system the average recruit doesn't have the power to change. And it darn sure doesn't help when we have radical anti-Americans inside Ft Hood working ostensibly for our side. As this Ft Hood story unfolds, I see the "traitor" problem and its potential for being a bigger problem in the future. Who was in charge of checking out the shooter's affiliations and Internet postings and when did that person plan on getting busy? Or was the shooter off to Iraq without any evaluation? Looks that way.
Oh, I am struggling to find the path of peace and freedom in the minefield of radical extremism.

*And I'm way out of my league to really discuss or try to assess Prof. Churchill. Once again, I struggle to understand the ways of the world and human nature. Is there anything we can all find in common on which to build peace and understanding?