22, February 2009 Suicides
The Philadelphia Inquirer is to be commended for spotlighting public attention on the alarming escalation of US military suicides. Last year, the Pentagon reported 143 soldiers took their own lives. The actual number may be significantly higher. According to Salon.com reporters, Mark Benjamin and Michael de Yoanna, “The soldiers seemed to be suffering classic symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder: explosions of anger, suicidal and homicidal ideation, flashbacks, nightmares and insomnia. The Army was responding, for the most part, with disciplinary action rather than treatment, evincing little concern for possible underlying problems. The soldiers self-medicated further with predictable outcomes.”
These soldiers have paid the ultimate price for the failed policies of Bush and Cheney who had little concern for the outcome of their failed policies. Let us bring these weary soldiers back home to their families and offer them the care and support they so desperately need. Let us send a strong message to the new Obama administration that the American people will no longer tolerate these foreign adventures which is depleting our treasury of billions of dollars and sending our young to their early graves. Our bloated military budget only encourages us to build and use more terrifying weapons of human destruction while our nation is drowning in a sea of debt. The planned escalation of troops in Afghanistan is a tragic mistake. Failure to act will sink us deeper into another Vietnam-type quagmire.
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