TROOPS’ MENTAL HEALTH
IS OFF THE NATION’S RADAR
By Joseph J. Honick
– A Guest on 21st Century Radio shows
There were 160 active-duty Army suicides in the year from Oct. 1,
2008, to Sept. 30, 2009, according to a Pentagon report released July
29. Then a headline on the New York Times August 1 front page tells
us: “Afghan strategy has fresh focus: targeted killing.”
And, by the way, men (and women, too), after you have done targeted
killing, be sure to be nice to your family and neighbors when you get
home … if you do.
If you think this madness is something new, think again. Seven years
ago, the Baltimore Sun published an article titled: “Army’s Suicide
Rate Has Outside Experts Alarmed.”
Military big wigs and armchair wizards assert they will have to look
into this pattern!
Look into it? Has it not occurred to them until now that – whatever
one thinks of these endless conflicts into which we have delivered our
men and women – the deployments and redeployments from home and
family, the driving pressures to annihilate people and property, and
all the rest naturally have taken their toll on even grizzled military
veterans in ways we cannot imagine.
Even if we supported this mindless war without end, we cannot
countenance the idea there are hardly any ways to rotate troops in any
logical way. Why? There is no draft to bring eligible citizens
If there were still a draft, it is doubtful even an apathetic public
would have accepted a conflict for which there is no declared national
commitment, even though we have spent more than a billion dollars on
private PR firms literally to hype the war at home and abroad.
And we have no draft because the late President Richard Nixon was
persuaded to sign a law creating the all-volunteer armed forces, thus
dividing the American society into a military and civilian population.
Now we have come full and disastrous circle where, if you add each
year’s statistics, hundreds of young men have taken their own lives,
and the folks who sent them to war are at a loss to figure out why.
Compounding this alarming reality are the orders now to make damned
sure every kill is strategic – but do kill – and when relieved, just
Well, on that score we have found that returning veterans, thousands
of them with Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, are poorly treated if at
all and often take out their problems on the very people they yearned
to see again. Or they take their own lives as they are not competent
to handle civilian existence again.
And so we return to the kind of newscast blip noted at the beginning
of this piece. There are no political candidates voicing even the
slightest concern over these issues in this pivotal election year.
Given the unusual economic realities of war and recession at the same
time, it is doubtful many will take up the plights of men and women
who have been sacrificed for the cloudiest of reasons.
For those of us who have been in the military and seen many not
return, we know there is a need for two things: fast and critical
change of policy, and an apathetic public to rise up against the
terrible realities confronting our men and women in combat.
A couple of years ago I wrote an impassioned piece about the need to
I wish our government showed it felt the same way.
* * *
Joseph J. Honick is an international consultant to business and
government and writes for many publications, including www.HuntingtonNews.net. Honick can be reached at joehonick@gmail.com
