From the NY Times:
The number of suicides reported by the Army has risen to the highest level since record-keeping began three decades ago. Last year, there were 192 among active-duty soldiers and soldiers on inactive reserve status, twice as many as in 2003, when the war began. (Five more suspected suicides are still being investigated.) This year’s figure is likely to be even higher: from January to mid-July, 129 suicides were confirmed or suspected, more than the number of American soldiers who died in combat during the same period.
Those statistics, of course, do not offer a full picture. Suicide counts tend to be undercounts, and the trend is less marked in other branches of the military. Nor are there reliable figures for veterans who have left the service; the Department of Veterans Affairs can only systematically track suicides among its hospitalized patients, and it does not issue regular suicide reports.
These suicides and other related psychological problems will reverberate for decades. Just ask the families of Vietnam War veterans. Sun Tzu said that one should do everything possible to avoid war, or as he put it: “The supreme act of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.” Our leaders failed to understand our enemies, sought war in places they did not fully comprehend, and did not fully understand the consequences that would flow from the wars they initiated. But our soldiers, their families and the peoples of Iraq and Afghanistan will be counting those costs for a very long time.
In addition, our soldiers have been “conditioned” to aggressively kill the enemy including civilians.
The psychological costs of this conditioning are not well understood; but, I believe, we are seeing it in the suicides & PTSD cases that are falling out.
The suicides are agonizing tragedies because they spring from decisions that never should have been made. The real numbers when veterans are included are certainly magnitudes higher than reported. They will go on for decades and easily surpass the number who died on Sept 11.
It is not only the civilians of Iraq and Afghanistan who will pay the costs for a very long time. The miseries that end in suicide can just as easily turn outward as violence against the people at home.
In a bizarre and dreadful sense, the suicides could be seen as providing the only ray of hope in this whole shameful episode. They show that there are still some people who cannot be ordered or cajoled indefinitely to act against their deepest moral sense — that at some point they break from the weight of what is expected of them and what they’ve been part of. The national tragedy is that the rest of us still learn little or nothing from their most supreme of sacrifices.
Some of those suicides are female soldiers who were raped by their supposed comrades in uniform. A few months ago, Bob Herbert wrote in the NYT that ‘Rape and other forms of sexual assault against women is the great shame of the US armed forces, and there is no evidence that this ghastly problem, kept out of sight as much as possible, is diminishing. New data released by the Pentagon showed an almost 9 percent increase in the number of sexual assaults — 2,923 — and a 25 percent increase in such assaults reported by women serving in Iraq and Afghanistan [over the past year].’ Read the whole column: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/21/opinion/21herbert.html?_r=2
Heard this from a friend who works in the VA
about his plans for ending the Bush bullshit in Iraq and Afghanistan?
Me neither.
kind of amazing how Obama has ignored Iraq since taking office
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See my recent diary – Lives Destroyed – Send Into the Hell of War.
Based on a comprehensive report by The Gazette in Colorado Springs.
Colorado Springs (The Gazette) – Before the murders started, Anthony Marquez’s mom dialed his sergeant at Fort Carson to warn that her son was poised to kill.
It was February 2006, and the 21-year-old soldier had not been the same since being wounded and coming home from Iraq eight months before. He had violent outbursts and thrashing nightmares. He was devouring pain pills and drinking too much. He always packed a gun.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."35 years ago after I got out of the army I worked in the emergency room at the VA hospital in San Francisco. I remember spending one evening talking a guy into taking an emetic so he’d throw up what he’d taken to attempt suicide. There was another guy who tossed himself out of a third-story window. Ironically, he almost killed a reporter who was there to write a story about mental health services. He landed right in front of her, head first. And our hospital wasn’t a real pysch hospital. Those guys were sent down the Peninsula.
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Given the controversy surrounding the legal basis for action, it is likely that the Court will scrutinise any allegations of war crimes by UK forces very closely. The Government has already been put on notice by CND that they intend to report to the ICC Prosecutor any incidents which their lawyers assess to have contravened the Geneva Conventions. The ICC would only be able to exercise jurisdiction over UK personnel if it considered that the UK prosecuting authorities were unable or unwilling to investigate and, if appropriate, prosecute the suspects themselves.
Blair, Brown to be grilled in public by the official inquiry into Iraq War
Most horrowing is the fact that the decision to go to war was made by Vietnam delinquent Bush and multi-deferment Cheney.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Then there’s the betrayal of stop-loss, multiple deployments, and ready reserve call-ups. Plus recruitment is low so they’ve relaxed the standards, all kinds of standards, including for personality disorders, criminal records, and membership in unsavory organizations. Result is lots of pent-up rage and despair looking for targets, inside or out.