The news that American Soldiers are killing themselves at the highest rate since 1981 is interesting. Scary. Nauseating. Inevitable...pick one. Surprising, not so much...the destruction of the best Army in the world by Chickenhawks and their proxies continues unabated.
Oh, I suspect the numbers are skewed to the left, by the way. A soldier who wants to die can find lots of ways to get killed and have it look like something else. Heroism; an accident; bad luck.
Nothing roils the Army like a suicide. I was peripherally involved in a couple, and had a few of my soldiers attempt suicides. In one case, I got a call at 2:30 AM that Private Schemdlap was at the Emergency Room. I called the company commander, the platoon leader and the platoon Sergeant. I got there about three, and stood by with the family and my soldiers until we were sure the guy was going to make it and had had a chance to tell him that this was not OK with us but we'd do whatever we could to take care of him. I went to Company, told my soldiers that one of their buddies had had a really bad time and then started fielding phone calls. CG on down. Since I'd been there since 3:00 AM I could answer all the questions, which saved my commander's job. Had we seen this coming? Uhh, no. Not really...err, well, yeah, maybe. I have no reason to believe that this has changed since 1990; I'm sure every suicide results in a very detailed and exhaustive effort to figure out why.
Still, there are a lot of things that have changed. The operational tempo for the services prior to 9/11 was exponentially faster than it was for most of the 23 years I spent in uniform. We had one major enemy and a few tangential ones. The was some predictability to life. There is none for a soldier or marine today, except that in 12-18 months at most, they will be in Iraq. Afghanistan if they're more or less a light fighter and lucky...that's a war that kinda makes sense. There is terrain, there is a more or less area where the bad guys are as opposed to their being everywhere. If married, and most are, they know that there will be money issues, there will be stress, anxiety, sexual tension without the chance of release, fear, agony and unexpected problems. The spouse gets exhausted about dealing with the stuff; the soldier can't begin to understand why the spouse doesn't understand.
The Military zeitgeist is also not good at dealing with mental and emotional health issues. Seriously, the military is the last cultural bastion equating psychological agony with moral failure and weakness. Soldiers cannot be weak -- you suck it up and drive on.
Unfortunately, there has to be some appropriate release. If not, bad things happen.
I'm currently dealing with a very bright young man who enlisted about eight years ago, went to flight school and was a warrant officer flying Apache gunships. He is incredibly tightly wired; he automatically reacts to any new situation or issue as if it were a threat. He got out, and is now a vehicle mechanic. But, out of guilt, he went into the Reserves and became an infantryman. He's now a Specialist, pay grade E-4; he used to be an officer. What the hell happened to him? He tried to tell me, and I think I understand, but I could never articulate it. He came back from Iraq, kept getting in trouble and was allowed to resign. DUIs, fighting, wrecking cars -- at first the command was supportive because he was a good soldier and a good flier, and then he became a pain in the ass. Well, off he went...but, no help. He sought assistance when his reserve unit came down on orders for iraq -- the VA and the California Guard are helping him. He has a direct line to me if things get too weird. Unfortunately, everything is weird.
Oh, he's one of the lucky ones.
But bad things will get worse...not before they get better necessarily; they can just get worse.
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