June 16, 2009
COMMENTARY: Military Suicides: A Billion to Sell a War
By Joseph J. Honick
Bainbridge Island, WA (HNN) -- If you fit into any of the marketing data published weekly by pollsters, it is more likely you will have watched American Idol than wondered why so many of our military personnel are committing suicide.
If that offends any readers, the option is to stop here.
Some may recall that the Bush administration spent upward of a billion dollars ($1,000,000,000,000) on private public relations firms just from 2002 to now to sell the war to us and the Iraqis and anyone who might pay attention.
The Department of Defense built and furnished a PR operation at Fort George Meade in Maryland reported to cost around $250 million and recently offered a contract for another $45 million to keep the Iraqis sold on the war there.
Nothing close to that has been invested in protecting the men and women we have deployed and re-deployed to that far-off spot. We have received no offers to help with the costs from those like Saudis whose 400 mile border with Iraq our men and women died to protect or the Kuwaitis whose young people couldn’t find the courage to help defend their own land while our armed forces took care of their problems.
According to news reports, the suicide rate among U.S. Army soldiers jumped in May, continuing a four month upward trend…and on a record pace for a second straight year.
Last month, the deaths of 17 soldiers were either confirmed or suspected to be suicides, up from 13 in April and 13 in March. Last year the Army recorded a record 133 suicides, the most ever.
These figures are just for the Army!
In a spasm of the obvious, Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Chiarelli declared: “We have got to do better.” What does “better” look like, General? Is that a reduction to only about 10 or so per month? Or do we find out what the hell is going on?
One thing we do know for sure is that, among the 101st Airborne, thousands have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan “several times” since the 9/11 tragedies . We also know that many families have been broken up by these kinds of record deployments and re-deployments and that morale has been depleted.
In a virtually unheard of step, last month Fort Campbell, Kentucky, home to that 101st Airborne Division, held a three-day “suicide stand-down training event, the second one this year.
To find some clues for this kind of tragic set of circumstances, one need only look to the day in 1972 when then President Richard Nixon, with one swift and foolish swipe of the pen signed the All Volunteer Army Act. With that action, he functionally separated the military from the rest of Americans as hired guns in a special society instead of assuming that, when the nation had to meet declared enemies, all qualified men (and maybe women) could be on call. Because of that and the now determined massive error in Iraq, the pool of available people to go to war collapsed.
In earlier times, lots of men worked hard to get deferments from the draft. Even the eventual Vice President of the United States -- Dick Cheney -- who now trots around the nation declaring wars to be good policy, worked hard to get enough deferments until finally having a heart problem that kept him out of any service at all.
To compound the array of failures of our government to protect those who did sign on to fight, we found inadequate armor being dished out, poor medical and psychiatric services to returning veterans and then of course the almost nonstop redeployment of people we had taught to kill and destroy and expected to come back calm, rested and ready for civilian life.
In an expression of seeming sensitivity, the base commander of Fort Hood, Texas, home of the 4th Infantry Division, another excessively redeployed group, made something called “focus on the family” a key part of the environment. Personnel had to leave work early to spend more time with the family. He said the steps “seem to be working,” meaning apparently that there were not quite as many suicides! What he failed to review is just how many of his troops actually had families waiting at home for them.
And so we return to one of the most egregious realities no one seems to want to make very public as a major governmental and military failure: the growing number of suicides among young people who volunteered to serve, get a lot of political speeches from our governmental leaders and dropped when no longer needed.
For those of us who have served in the military and seen many not return, this kind of phony attention from those who command our forces, hardly recalls how the nation supported our efforts when wars included everyone in the conflicts…selling war bonds, rationing precious metals and other items and making the public willing partners.
A couple of years ago, I wrote an impassioned piece about the need to support our troops. I still believe in that necessity. I wish our government felt likewise.
* * *
Honick is an international consultant to business and government and writes for many publications, including www.huntingtonnews.net. Honick can be reached at jhonick@gmail.com
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COMMENTARY: Military Suicides: A Billion to Sell a War
By Joseph J. Honick
Bainbridge Island, WA (HNN) -- If you fit into any of the marketing data published weekly by pollsters, it is more likely you will have watched American Idol than wondered why so many of our military personnel are committing suicide.
If that offends any readers, the option is to stop here.
Some may recall that the Bush administration spent upward of a billion dollars ($1,000,000,000,000) on private public relations firms just from 2002 to now to sell the war to us and the Iraqis and anyone who might pay attention.
The Department of Defense built and furnished a PR operation at Fort George Meade in Maryland reported to cost around $250 million and recently offered a contract for another $45 million to keep the Iraqis sold on the war there.
Nothing close to that has been invested in protecting the men and women we have deployed and re-deployed to that far-off spot. We have received no offers to help with the costs from those like Saudis whose 400 mile border with Iraq our men and women died to protect or the Kuwaitis whose young people couldn’t find the courage to help defend their own land while our armed forces took care of their problems.
According to news reports, the suicide rate among U.S. Army soldiers jumped in May, continuing a four month upward trend…and on a record pace for a second straight year.
Last month, the deaths of 17 soldiers were either confirmed or suspected to be suicides, up from 13 in April and 13 in March. Last year the Army recorded a record 133 suicides, the most ever.
These figures are just for the Army!
In a spasm of the obvious, Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Chiarelli declared: “We have got to do better.” What does “better” look like, General? Is that a reduction to only about 10 or so per month? Or do we find out what the hell is going on?
One thing we do know for sure is that, among the 101st Airborne, thousands have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan “several times” since the 9/11 tragedies . We also know that many families have been broken up by these kinds of record deployments and re-deployments and that morale has been depleted.
In a virtually unheard of step, last month Fort Campbell, Kentucky, home to that 101st Airborne Division, held a three-day “suicide stand-down training event, the second one this year.
To find some clues for this kind of tragic set of circumstances, one need only look to the day in 1972 when then President Richard Nixon, with one swift and foolish swipe of the pen signed the All Volunteer Army Act. With that action, he functionally separated the military from the rest of Americans as hired guns in a special society instead of assuming that, when the nation had to meet declared enemies, all qualified men (and maybe women) could be on call. Because of that and the now determined massive error in Iraq, the pool of available people to go to war collapsed.
In earlier times, lots of men worked hard to get deferments from the draft. Even the eventual Vice President of the United States -- Dick Cheney -- who now trots around the nation declaring wars to be good policy, worked hard to get enough deferments until finally having a heart problem that kept him out of any service at all.
To compound the array of failures of our government to protect those who did sign on to fight, we found inadequate armor being dished out, poor medical and psychiatric services to returning veterans and then of course the almost nonstop redeployment of people we had taught to kill and destroy and expected to come back calm, rested and ready for civilian life.
In an expression of seeming sensitivity, the base commander of Fort Hood, Texas, home of the 4th Infantry Division, another excessively redeployed group, made something called “focus on the family” a key part of the environment. Personnel had to leave work early to spend more time with the family. He said the steps “seem to be working,” meaning apparently that there were not quite as many suicides! What he failed to review is just how many of his troops actually had families waiting at home for them.
And so we return to one of the most egregious realities no one seems to want to make very public as a major governmental and military failure: the growing number of suicides among young people who volunteered to serve, get a lot of political speeches from our governmental leaders and dropped when no longer needed.
For those of us who have served in the military and seen many not return, this kind of phony attention from those who command our forces, hardly recalls how the nation supported our efforts when wars included everyone in the conflicts…selling war bonds, rationing precious metals and other items and making the public willing partners.
A couple of years ago, I wrote an impassioned piece about the need to support our troops. I still believe in that necessity. I wish our government felt likewise.
* * *
Honick is an international consultant to business and government and writes for many publications, including www.huntingtonnews.net. Honick can be reached at jhonick@gmail.com
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