02:53 PM
Observatorium Minefields in the Minds of our Military

The Price of Valor from The New Yorker is a serious look at the damage being done to our soldiers. We, the public, the people back home, may support them (regardless of our views on the war), but our government is busy using them up and tossing them back out. The training tactics may raise the soldier's physical survivability rate on the battlefield, which is good, I'm glad we've learned from the past. But when nothing is done to ensure their mental and physical survival after the battle is over, have they really truly survived?

Thirty soldiers have committed suicide either while in Iraq or after returning home. The actual successful suicide rate is always just the tip of the iceberg, for every person who actually kills themself, there's dozens more who are severely affected by these events and they're not getting cared for by our government. The Dept of Defense can issue orders and sweep the coffins returning from Iraq under the carpet but they are attempting to do the same with the living soldiers coming home too.

It doesn't matter if you're for or against this war or the next one, we have to protect our soldiers, not just physically on the battlefield, but also after, we have to make it possible for them to come home and have a good life afterwards. Sometimes there are things worth fighting for, even worth dying for, we have to make it possible to live for them too. Yellow ribbons and flags on porches aren't enough.

This isn't the first time this has come up, there was an article in Time magazine two or three years ago (iirc but I don't have a link) about four soldiers who were all in (different) elite fighting units who had all had operations experience. All four men killed their wives and two of them killed themselves as well. The rigors of breaking down our societal resistance to killing is not an easy thing - it may be necessary but we can't hide from the consequences or else we risk a generation - and the effect it may have on their families, their children. We must truly honor the soldier's sacrifice - we must repair what we break.