Submitted by: Mike Spindell, guest blogger
“There were 154 suicides among active-duty troops in the first 155 days of the year, according to a recent report from the Associated Press, a number that is 50 percent higher than the number of U.S. forces killed in action in Afghanistan over that time period. It is the highest rate in 10 years of war.” http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/federal-eye/post/panetta-calls-rise-in-military-suicide-troubling-and-tragic/2012/06/22/gJQAnQSPvV_blog.html
The above quote was taken from an article in yesterday’s Washington Post. The article was about a statement made by Defense Secretary Leo Panetta http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Panetta speaking to a Department of Defense and Veterans Affairs annual conference on suicide prevention in the military.
“Panetta called suicide in the military “perhaps the most frustrating challenge” he has faced since becoming secretary of defense last year.
There are no easy answers, but that is no damn reason for not finding the answer to the problem of suicide,” Panetta told attendees at the departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs annual conference on suicide prevention in the military.
The conference heard Thursday from a panel of family members who spoke of what they said was the military services’ failure to provide appropriate and timely mental health care to service members who had sought help.”
“The stories told by the family panel members run counter to the prevailing wisdom that the biggest hurdle in trying to prevent suicide in the military is the stigma associated with seeking help, noted Bonnie Carroll, president and founder of Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors (TAPS), a military family group that organized the panel.
“We were hearing about folks who said, ‘I want to get help, I want to be better, I have a lot to live for,’ but were not getting that help,” Carroll said.
“In his address Friday morning, Panetta said that it is the responsibility of leaders from non-commissioned officers on up to ensure that troops showing signs of stress be “aggressively” encouraged to seek help. “We have to make clear we will not tolerate actions that belittle, that haze individuals, particularly those who seek help,” he said. Panetta said concerns about access to behavioral health care prompted his decision earlier this month to order a service-wide review of mental health diagnoses. The action followed an Army investigation into concerns that some soldiers had their diagnoses reversed because of the costs of caring for them. “
Let me be fair and say that I have no doubt as to the sincerity of Secretary Panetta in wanting to deal with this issue and I approve of all efforts to get treatment both psychologically and emotionally to provide our troops with all the assistance they need. However, as much effort as is put into solving this problem by the powers that be, the essential issue is that war is horrible and our country has now engaged in two wars that have lasted almost a decade. Beyond that, as these wars have worn on it has become increasingly obvious to all concerned that there was no need to fight them in the first place. Our troops are not stupid and I believe despite the great efforts to indoctrinate them with purpose, they recognize the futility of their efforts. If I’m correct then how does a rational human being connect the constant dangers and bloody revulsion they must feel, with the reality of their service?
My sense is that the connection, as many in our Armed Services have stated repeatedly, is to the other members of their squad. Nothing establishes a bond between human beings as strong as that of shared hardship and danger, save for perhaps sex and as we know that can be temporary at best. If the good of ones immediate comrades then become one’s motivation for survival, how is that individual affected by their injuries and deaths? Concurrently though, if ones immediate comrades bond to form a strong cohesive unit, where in their hierarchy of feelings do they place their spouses, children and other family?
Over and again, in interviews and in literature, the experience of war as related by those involved in its prosecution, is that they have never felt so alive in all their lives. While I’ve thankfully never had the experience of combat, as a human being I think I can understand what that emotion must be like. Most of us can in fact understand that. Think of the times in your life when you have been faced with danger and the heightened feelings that are associated with it as our body produces adrenalin and goes on the alert. Take those times, with for must of us have been relatively brief and imagine spending six month tours of duty, where these experiences are ongoing. What then does someone do when you juxtapose returning home to ones loved ones to that feeling of “aliveness”. My guess is that life must seem almost empty when returning to the safety of their “normal” lives. We humans, due to our self-awareness thrive on “purpose”. Since we are mortal and since we really don’t know if death is an ending or beginning, we all must find a purpose to our existence, or it becomes meaningless.
Our troops, usually at an age where they are just becoming adults, find that purpose in their military service. When sent to combat their purpose narrows into one of survival of themselves and their comrades. Many marry young and begin families, only to be separated for long periods from those families. In relationships, despite the cliché that “absence makes the heart grow fonder”, propinquity is really the glue that holds relationships together. Young children grow quickly and need the presence and constant bonding of parenthood. So too that bonding holds true for the parent. Extended absences loosen that bond. Returning home, as joyous as the initial feelings may be, can also be trying on those reuniting.
This though isn’t really about the specific why of this terribly alarming rate of suicide among our troops. Millions of words, thousands of studies have been completed and yet suicide is still a human behavior that both mystifies us and fills us with disquiet. What I can state definitively is the obvious. Suicide is the act of someone who has found that their life is no longer tolerable and feels that there is no chance of future improvement. There is no one size fits all solutions to why someone kills themselves, because the reasons are unique to the individual. When we talk of our troop’s participation in a never-ending war, in a foreign culture where we are rightly seen as invaders, isn’t the root cause of suicides rather obvious, even if each person’s act is unique to them.
If we were really serious about ending the alarming, increasing suicides among our troops, then perhaps we should end these purposeless wars, that have far outlasted any wars in this nation’s history, save for Viet Nam. In Viet Nam, where fifty thousand died and hundreds of thousands were injured both physically and psychologically, this nation learned the lesson of the destructiveness of a purposeless war of choice. The difference now is that our news media shared the horrors of Viet Nam with us. Now the deaths and the destruction are barely reported upon and no doubt the anonymity of their sacrifices also plays a role in the obvious despair that those led to suicide feel. This doesn’t even begin to take into account those who don’t choose that final option and yet whose lives have been broken by the devastation they’ve experienced.
While we may tepidly applaud the efforts of Defense Department to ameliorate this problem, the fact remains that the most obvious, yet unaired way to stop these suicides is to end the wars immediately and unequivocally. Yet obvious as this may be, we all know that the U.S. engagement in all parts of this world will not end soon under our current national predilection. With the buildup of the U.S. military under the necessity of World War II, those profiting from it and the military itself, found that America as the world military power kept them employed and wealthy. Having a paranoid, psychotic like Stalin, leading the Soviet Union provided an excellent excuse to engage in continuing to build American military strength and proclaiming a Cold War. The collapse of Chiang Kai Shek’s despotic rule of China, succeeded by Mao Tse Tsung’s communist regime, gave the appearance of an epic struggle between the “good” of Capitalism and the “bad” of Communism. To the mutual content of these opposing powers militarist leadership this “War” was fought on a global basis. As the beloved Dwight Eisenhower was retiring from the Presidency, this great former Five Star General was so bothered by the entrenchment of militarism in the U.S. that he cautioned its citizens to “beware of the Military-Industrial Complex”.
Ultimately, my point here is that the suicides of our troops is precisely related to the waging of endless wars, which have no real relationship to issues vital to our country. A person will, given the threat to their family and to their country, be willing to risk their very existence to stave it off. When that “threat” begins to assume a never-ending continuity and ones sacrifices are given lip service for those they purportedly are fighting for, can we doubt the onset of despair?
The ability to express ideas and come to conclusions regarding problems is limited by the language available. The power of our Military Industrial Complex to frame the foreign policy debate has lasted in this country for almost seventy years. With that power has come what I see to be their freedom from restraint by the three branches of our government. http://jonathanturley.org/2012/03/17/a-real-history-of-the-last-sixty-two-years/#more-46802 It is therefore no surprise that talk as we may about the causes of and the dealing with, our troop’s tragic suicides, the obvious causation is overlooked. Stop the damn wars and bring our troop’s home. Use the positive skills taught them to help rebuild this countries economy and I believe they will flourish, rather than wither. This is easy for me to say, but the reality is that too many of our elite, whether corporations or military leaders, flourish under this mad system for them to relinquish it voluntarily. Until we as a people rise to impose our will upon those who have exploited our fears for their profit, I say please spare me your cant, or your sorrow for those driven to death by their despair in pursuit of your pointless wars, against chimerical foes, for the sole purpose of personal greed and status.
Submitted by: Mike Spindell, guest blogger
lottakatz, Excellent video at Al Jezeera. The War Resister’s League has been analyzing the budget for years and product a pie chart that shows where the tax dollars go.
Most seem to miss the point of: “Missing the Point When the Point is Obvious.”
So much talk of drugs here instead of unending war.
Thanks, Mike, for pointing out the obvious.
In regards to drugs. I have several Fraternity brothers who left school for a year to go fight in Iraq when the war kicked off. They came back to school different…most of them would have been happy/eager to fight in Afghanistan, but to them Iraq was an unnecessary war that was going to get their friends and possibly them killed.
They all got through it physically, but they were all mentally changed when they got back. You could almost see the things they’d seen in their eyes.
All of them had some form of therapy…most of the have recovered/gotten through their mental issues. The guy who saw the worst of it, in Falujjah, obviously came back in the worst shape mentally. He also happened to be the guy who loved to smoke some pot before he joined up, so he had a different belief/perspective/ideation when he was confronting his ptsd.
He knew a ‘shaman’, how trained or what the background of this ‘shaman’ is I do not know. What I do know is that our friend sought the counsel of that shaman several times in the months after returning from war. I know that psyilocibin mushrooms were a large part of his therapy, I also know that out of all of those guys who went over and came back change, is now the most like his former self. Happy and gregarious. And he credits magic mushrooms and spiritual guidance for his recovery.
There are studies which show that psyilocib mushrooms have the power to help heal individuals from PTSD and have been shown to have a profound impact on the mental states of patients with terminal illnesses. Unfortunately, these studies are limited and usually have not occured in the US. Hallucinogenic Mushrooms remain on par with the worst of our drugs according to the schedule, even though they have been shown to be innocous, to the point where they are listed as less damaging that caffiene in (non-governmental) listings. We need to free up restrictions on these powerful medicines and others so that we can see the benefits they provide more clearly. I think there are thousands of vets with mental issues that could be treated as my fraternity brother was and derive great benefits.
But instead, we’ll pump them full of pharmacueticals that produce suicidal ideations. Disgusting.
Thanks for writing about military and veteran suicides within the context of an anti-war ethos, Mike. Apropos of your remarks, I just finished reading Home from the War. Vietnam Veterans: Neither Victims nor Executioners (1973), by psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton. In it, he speaks about the Rap Groups that he helped organize with members of Vietnam Veterans Against the War:
America’s War on Southeast Asis (Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos) changed my life irrevocably and goes on affecting where and how I live today. Hence I can especially identify with what one my fellow veterans said in the last line of Professor Lifton’s fascinating book:
“I’m going to be a Vietnam veteran against the war for the rest of my life.”
Nada.
I’ve been watching a BBC program that is a couple of years old during the last few days titled “Inside The Medieval Mind”. It is an information dense examination of medieval Britain and has 4 parts: Knowledge, Belief, Sex and Power. The resonance with the underpinning belief structure driving the rightward trends in America today is startling.
The Knight class were useful but expensive when they weren’t keeping the peasants in line, consolidating the power of their Lords or crusading, which was a money-maker for the King, the Lords and themselves.
I ran across this today and thought it belonged here. Everything old is new again.
“More than half of every dollar we pay into taxes goes toward military spending, according to an analysis posted by Al-Jazeera earlier this week.
The video illustrates a conversation between radio host Dennis Bernstein and journalist Dave Lindorff.
“People have to realize that 53 cents of every dollar that they are paying into taxes is going to the military,” Lindorff says. “It’s an astonishing figure. There is an enormous, enormous amount of money being blown on war and killing and destruction.” ”
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/06/24/al-jazeera-video-breaks-down-military-spending-by-the-dollar/
Thank you all for your thoughtful comments. Patrick’s particularly resonated with me because in his moving comment he captured the essence of what impelled me to write this piece. People can classify me politically as they will, but my politics though heartfelt, do not explain what moves me the most. I’m far to rational in thought to allow myself to idolize anyone. Yet one of my heroes of history was the lawyer Clarence Darrow. Darrow defended those who needed defense in his time were they victim’s of corporate accidents in torts cases, the beginning labor movement or for the concept of evolution being taught in school. It is therefore little coincidence that I was attracted to Professor Turley’s blog.
Darrow’s law partner for may years was the lawyer and poet Edgar Lee Masters. Darrow’s biographer Irving Stone compared the two. He said that Masters “hated people, but loved humanity, while Darrow hated humanity ad loved people”. When I first read that many years ago it resonated with me. When I look at humanity macro-cosmically I feel repelled by the repetitions of war, greed and oppression, that I believe characterizes all society’s including our own. However, when I think of people’s individual lives and struggles my heart aches with empathy, understanding the feelings from the struggles of my own life. During Viet Nam, which was the definitive war of my lifetime, during my life’s definitive decade, I was not drafted only due to exceedingly high blood pressure. Despite my good fortune, I felt for those poor soldiers who were forced, or conned into risking their lives, in a bad cause. They weren’t the enemy, the M.I.Complex was. As we see the death and desolation caused by these two insane wars I can’t help but feel for our soldiers, who’ve been given an impossible mission. It is the pain felt by them and their loved ones that stirs my heart and that’s why I wrote this blog.
OS, just to follow up, and hopefully close the subject I, too, can get wound up about, I spent virtually all of my career in psychotherapy in a community public health system, specializing in substance abuse, with a clientele heavily weighted towards those caught up in criminal justice “system”. Most of the vets got shunted to the VA, but I saw enough to get a feel. Just in the past decade or so has the system been open to acknowledging the integral nature of the problems we are seeing. Too late for a lot of folks. And, IMO, it’s highly unlikely that sufficient remedial measures will be taken to help those society has deemed unworthy, virtually dispensable.
Cheers! (slight irony)
Wonderful goods from you, man. I’ve understand your stuff previous to and you’re just too fantastic. I really like what you have acquired here, really like what you’re saying and the way in which you say it. You make it entertaining and you still take care of to keep it wise. I cant wait to read much more from you. This is actually a great web site.
Hmm, my own filter appears to be broken. I looked twice for profanity, and didn’t see it. Is that a bad sign? 😉
Regarding the talk above about getting out of Afghanistan and other places. I am reminded of the anti war button in the sixties. Nixon: Pull Out Now Like Your Father Should Have.
Or: Dont Change Dicks In The Middle of a Screw, Vote For Nixon in ’72.
OS, a little story that reminds me of your friend, and several of my Muslim friends —
Last February a poor, young couple with a small infant were driving from Houston to Phoenix where employment was to be had if they could get there by Monday morning. But on Sunday morning their old car broke down in El Paso.
A pastor on his way to church saw the family on the side of the interstate with the hood of the car raised, and though his heart went out for the baby he had to hurry to church to look over his sermon. Same with the chairman of the deacons who had to make sure the offering plates were ready. And the same with everyone else going to church,
Then Al stopped to help. He took the family to his home for breakfast while his cousin Mo, who owned an auto repair shop, picked up the car with his wrecker. Soon the car was fixed. Mo told the family to pay the bill when they had earned enough in Phoenix. Al’s wife gave the mother a bag of groceries in which she had secreted $100.
Why would do this for us, the family asked. Because, Ali and and his cousin Mohammed replied, it is the will of Allah.
I have a Muslim friend who was born and raised in the Middle East. He is extremely well educated and one of the kindest people I ever met. He is a physician specializing in psychiatry, and I know him to be a keen observer of the human condition. My youngest daughter asked him one day why they could not just sit down and talk things out. He patted her on the shoulder and explained gently, “They have been living that way and fighting among themselves for more than three thousand years. What makes us think we can force them to change their way of life in a single generation?”
He was in favor of getting out of Afghanistan as soon as possible now that bin Laden is dead. He said he did not want to see any more kids coming home crippled, brain damaged and maimed, much less in boxes. He had worked on the staff of a VA hospital trying to rehabilitate brain damaged vets. Now THAT is a sad, thankless undertaking.
CLH,
The moderation filter only has four words in it (f*ck, a**shole, b*tch and b*stard). That is the only content filter in operation. All of the items on the blacklist filter are known spammers or the few people otherwise banned from posting. Since I’m poking around anyway, I looked at your comment and it does indeed carry the word “f*cked”. Since the filter is a simple string matching programing, that is why it was captured. So what I did was edit out one character of your post and approve it. Sorry for the inconvenience.
Sigh. Though I doubt that anyone would actually care, I’m going to stop reading and commenting on this forum if the stupid filter isn’t fixed.
I agree with virtually everything posted here today (ignoring the clinical debate, I’m far less than qualified to judge the merits on that), but with reservations, and caveats.
Virtually everyone who reads this blog, and comments regularly or otherwise, agree that the wars, as they exist today, are wasteful, terrible, and stupid. There is a lot of talk of the MIC, and of political maneuvering, as the primary motivations for going to war, and for continuing the wars. There is a great deal of talk about the “hidden” costs of war, of the suicides, the mental health issues, medical costs of treatment through the VA, etc. There is a lot of talk of “pulling out now, right now”.
The last is the issue I’m least sure of. There was just cause for entering into war with the Taliban, though many on this forum will disagree. Indeed, we had a stronger case of “casus belli” with the death of over three thousand people in the 9/11 attacks than we have had for virtually any other war in our history. The Spanish American war was over the destruction (real or imagined) of a single ship. The Vietnam war was over the attack on a ship (as the official casus belli). WWI was a mix match cluster fuck of alliances and treaties and bizarre justifications and codes that dated back two centuries. The casus belli for the 2003 invasion of Iraq was “failure to comply with cease-fire agreements”, firing on planes in the no fly zone, and so called WMD manufacture or aquistion. (Note to all: Saddam Hussein really did have chemical weapons, though not in a quantity or capacity to affect the US, he just gassed his own citizens. No nuclear capabilites, no biological agents, or means of delivery of chemical agents outside a very limited area).
What I am in conflict over, instead of whether or not we should be there in the first place, is how we leave. I agree with the initial invasion of Afghanistan wholeheartedly- the ongoing nature of the conflict is something else altogether. However, its now an issue that’s been relegated to fait accompli. We’re there, and we can’t change the past. However, we do get to decide what our exit policy is. If we simply pull out, just leave, there will be a blood bath there that will dwarf by orders of magnitude anything we’ve ever done to their civilian and combatant populations. There will be civil war that will last for decades beyond the violence we’ve already inflicted on that nation. And the ones to suffer will be the ones I would most want to protect, the women and children, the apolitical villagers who simply seek to survive, and the people who want a life free of religious and social and politcal oppression. Anyone who thinks that a rapid, uncontrolled pull out would accomplish anything other than a mass civil war is delusional. The tribes there are so spun up now that the only thing keeping any kind of lid on the explosive kettle is the presence of US forces. We leave, and that pot goes boom. But if we slowly, and carefully, pull our forces out, while continuing to invest in their infrastructure, education, and politcal stability, we can mitigate (though not stop, not in the least) the violence.
We f*cked that nation up, royally and totally. It would be the height of amorality to simply abandom them to their own devices. I know I’ve argued in the past that we should GTFO, but a more thoughtful approach to the subject on my part is what I’ve just written. Yes, it will cost more in terms of American money and blood, but that was a cost we should have considered when we invaded. You either do it right, or you don’t do it atl all.
Ok, so it’s not exaclty related to suicide, but I’m so spun up on THAT issue, it’d be a forty thousand word rant by the time I finished.
Lee, this is the comment I just left in tonight’s IGTNT diary. Three more gone in a cloud of smoke from an IED. Sometimes the words come hard. Being in Afghanistan did not work for the British in the 19th century, the Soviet Union in the 20th and will not work for the US in the 21st.
http://www.dailykos.com/comments/1075194/46537283#c23
Thanks OS I did look at that. Initially when I put it on my car I used small photos but so many no way even when choseonly a few they could be seen. This is the site I had used Faces of the fallen http://apps.washingtonpost.com/national/fallen/
The problem is we can find these sites but the news media, esp tv, seem to have no idea where to find this info.
DonS, yes indeed it is a horror. And the self medication is both a social and medical problem. Alcohol seems to be the main avenue of self medication for vets with PTSD because it is cheap and readily available. Then we have three problems, not two. More than that if they end up in the clutches of the criminal justice system instead of treatment.
This is a rant that does not take much to get me started on. I am very slow to anger, and seldom get angry. This makes me angry. I will dial it back now, you guys would not like me if I start frothing at the mouth.
@ OS “Not all people who have PTSD are depressed, but if the anxiety attacks continue long enough, and are intense enough, depression will result. PTSD and depression are often comorbid.”
The roller coaster, the mood swings, the self medicating, the synergistic effect, etc. And, no, of course, that does not automatically indicate bipolar! But it is agitated depression. Clinical anxiety and depression. What a horror.