The Broken Soldier

I hate reading lately.  I have trouble concentrating, and more often than not whatever author I’m reading has very little to say or has no reason to believe he/she knows dick of the subject they’re prattling on about.  But occasionally I come across a well-written, well-thought out, honest account of something - whatever that something happens to be.  Today I found James Carroll’s Op-Ed in The Boston Globe titled “A blind eye on soldiers’ suicides.’  I’ve pasted excerpts and the source URL below.

I considered pasting the article in its entirety, but a lot of it is quixotic, hyperbolic anti-war screed.  Violence as “suicide of species” and what not.  And while I do sympathize with Carroll’s take, such discussions are best left for coffee houses, college classrooms, the floors of Congress, and other venues in which threnodic discourse is an end rather than a means to or a call to action.

“‘SUPPORT THE troops” is an American lie. This nation is grievously and knowingly failing the young men and women who wear the uniform of its military services, and nothing demonstrates that more powerfully than the suicides of soldiers. According to the Army’s own figures, the rate of suicide among active duty personnel nearly doubled between 2001 and 2006. The number then grew even higher in 2007, when suicide ranked third as the cause of death among members of the National Guard. Even if proximate causes vary from war zones to home fronts, such data are anomalous, since suicide rates among soldiers historically go down during wartime, not up.”

“Unit cohesion is the absolute virtue. Thus our soldiers prepare to die not for Iraq, nor even for America, but for one another. “I’ve got your back,” they promise. In combat, such commitment is often heroically fulfilled, but, alas, once the bureaucracy replaces the buddy, loyalty, too, is found to be a lie. Harsh to say, but the American military cares nothing for the individuals who comprise it, only for the mission those individuals, in formation, can accomplish.”

Source: http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2008/06/30/a_blind_eye_on_soldiers_suicides/