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.
