The forever wars that the US launched after 9/11 led to a surge in military suicides, a new study claims, with traumatized soldiers taking their own lives as they are repeatedly deployed in conflicts that have no public support.
A new report by Brown University’s Costs of War Project provides a new insight into what many dubbed an epidemic of suicides among the US military. Based on data from the DoD, the VA and secondary sources, the study found that at least four times as many military lives were lost to suicide than to combat in wars launched since the 9/11 terrorist attack.
Shhhh.
Some things we don’t talk about in polite society.
with traumatized soldiers taking their own lives as they are repeatedly deployed in conflicts that have no public support. -- saboI saw this play out in my little town. We have a monument to the kid. He drew pictures of planes and guns shooting at some non-descript enemy when he was a kid, and dreamed of saving the world or something. Graduated with good grades from high school and immediately went to Iraq with the total support of his friends and family. We'll probably never know what he saw or heard that caused him to take his own life.
Okay, of course some of those things should be shouted from the rafters.
I can still remember the run up to that insane Cheney/Bush profiteering scheme they marketed as Shock’n Awe - like it was a TV show trying to out do the competition.
Yet, next to no one of importance stood up. Okay some did, there was the horrifyingly fascinated in-depth news program “Democracy Now” that did an excellent job of delineated the lies being peddled - but who cared? No one that mattered. As for those who did care, no real networking, no cross fertilization of ideas, no movement intent on growing, everyone was too busy waving their flags and feeling sorry for themselves, as if we were the only one’s that ever had innocents killed by war mongers.
Stealing that election and then that administration turning a blind eye to the Bin Laden threat, all but inviting an attack for the political leverage it would give them.
Anyone with any common sense and anything close to an objective perspective - knew it could only become a disaster, one that showed America to be a Great White cold blooded Satan, (and stupid blind by their arrogance, greed and power lust). All it could do was legitimize terrorism as the only thing weaklings had to counter the American corporate war machine with. It guaranteed endless conflict and increasing misunderstanding.
Then turning soldiers into “heroes” for the mass advertising. But, just like the “right to lifers” it was all show and facade with no carrying followup. VA wasn’t there, our society wasn’t there, and vets were left to their own devices. No one was there to help them figure out that hope is a survival strategy in hopeless times. Yada, yada, yade.
And yes, I’m sure Sabolina will gleefully point out that at the time Biden was a key figure, one who put all his weight into helping make that utterly insane counterproductive Shock’n Awe happen - rather than enunciating why this planned action was insane and that it would inflame terrorism and hatred of America and Americans, in a time when the world actually had our sympathies.
We should have focused on finding Bin Laden, who everyone who knew anything about the situation agreed, was hated by Saddam Hussein and that Saddam was innocent of any involvement with the 9/11 attack. He was just an easy to target and easy to vilify and to build our propaganda around.
But that was then and this is now.
https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/papers/summaryCost of War
SUMMARY OF FINDINGS
Some of the Costs of War Project’s main findings include:At least 800,000 people have died due to direct war violence, including armed forces on all sides of the conflicts, contractors, civilians, journalists, and humanitarian workers.
It is likely that many times more have died indirectly in these wars, due to malnutrition, damaged infrastructure, and environmental degradation.
Over 335,000 civilians have been killed in direct violence by all parties to these conflicts.
Over 7,000 US soldiers have died in the wars.
We do not know the full extent of how many US service members returning from these wars became injured or ill while deployed.
Many deaths and injuries among US contractors have not been reported as required by law, but it is likely that approximately 8,000 have been killed.
21 million Afghan, Iraqi, Pakistani, and Syrian people are living as war refugees and internally displaced persons, in grossly inadequate conditions.The US government is conducting counterterror activities in 85 countries, vastly expanding this war across the globe.
The wars have been accompanied by erosions in civil liberties and human rights at home and abroad.
The human and economic costs of these wars will continue for decades with some costs, such as the financial costs of US veterans’ care, not peaking until mid-century.
US government funding of reconstruction efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan has totaled over $199 billion. Most of those funds have gone towards arming security forces in both countries. Much of the money allocated to humanitarian relief and rebuilding civil society has been lost to fraud, waste, and abuse.
The cost of the Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Syria wars totals about $6.4 trillion. This does not include future interest costs on borrowing for the wars, which will add an estimated $8 trillion in the next 40 years.
The ripple effects on the US economy have also been significant, including job loss and interest rate increases.
Both Iraq and Afghanistan continue to rank extremely low in global studies of political freedom.
Women in Iraq and Afghanistan are excluded from political power and experience high rates of unemployment and war widowhood.
Compelling alternatives to war were scarcely considered in the aftermath of 9/11 or in the discussion about war against Iraq. Some of those alternatives are still available to the US.
Where do we go from here. Cynicism, sarcasm, shit flinging, giving up?
I really don’t know.
ps. I hardly listen to them anymore, I can only handle the news in small doses these days, but they are still around: https://www.democracynow.org
My father never talked about his experiences in WWII.
He was in Europe, Battle of the Bulge (among others).
Sorry Lausten I was busy reading and writing my comment and didn’t notice your’s going up. When it touches home it hurts. Being flippant is a self-defense sometimes, and inappropriate at others. My dad never talked about his WWII experience, what I do know comes from others. But my mom, well, try not eating your dinner and being a lil picky prick and you might wind up listening to refugee stories. Guess once you’re literally starving and running for your life, it stays with you.
Writing this I wonder whether the difference between the two was the fact that she was pure victim, whereas my dad was given a gun, trained to kill, even if he never wanted to kill anyone, and was sent into battle (Italy), even if ultimately he got very lucky. First a wing shot, then being captured by the British, bandaged up and housed for the duration of the war in beautiful Egypt, tents, no air conditioning.
So in some ways dad had it easier than my mom. But she was exposed to the horrors from a different perspective and so far as I know never harmed anyone herself.
I had a great uncle who was in WWII. He was a medic who went in after the battle and basically he decided which ones could be saved and which could not. After the war he was an atheist and would have some of the worst arguments about God with my grandfather (his brother). It was really bad and a bit frightening for a little girl. I remember one argument that frightened me really badly. My great uncle got up and left, but before he walked out the door, it seemed to me he looked at me with sad eyes. According to my grandmother, my great uncle was not right in the head because he did not believe there is a god, but allegedly, before he died, he finally said, “maybe there is a god”. IMHO, it was one of those made up deathbed confession believers like to tell, but to me, war doesn’t just cause suicides, PTSD, maimed bodies, damaged brains, etc, but it is a horrible way to create atheists. Of course there is nothing wrong with being an atheist, because I am one, but very act of having to “play god” as soldiers lie dying after a battle is a living nightmare, I’m sure. It’s understandable why he didn’t believe, but IMHO, an education is a much easier road to atheism than war. Less nightmares and no PTSD from an education. Although religion itself could cause PTSD or at least Religious Trauma Syndrome, but I don’t think quite like war does, but attempting to force someone to believe after they’ve been through hell and back via war… I’m sure it stirred his PTSD too, not just his disbelief. My great uncle saw hell, because it is said “war is hell” and he saw the worst as he decided who could be saved after a battle and who could not. I’m sure he had to cut some limbs off too or seen the aftermath of limbs blasted off a person, maybe even soldiers with serious head injuries- maybe ones in which there was no repairing worse than Phineas Gage ever displayed. No one could put Humpty back together again after a battle. I can only imagine what he went through.
PTSD - mrianaYes. Important to note, it didn't just start in the ME wars. It just finally got a name.
Probably with many “wartime” families you hear old stories and sometimes they resemble PTSD symptoms.
“Ol’ Uncle Jack would always work on his toy trains in the basement on the 4th of July”
Yes. Important to note, it didn’t just start in the ME wars. It just finally got a name.Probably with many “wartime” families you hear old stories and sometimes they resemble PTSD symptoms.
“Ol’ Uncle Jack would always work on his toy trains in the basement on the 4th of July”
Exactly. It didn’t start with recent wars. It was once called “shellshock” and before that, something else, but “shellshock” is the more recent word that many know. After it was called PTSD, it was a realization that the disorder doesn’t just happen to those who go to war. It happens to incest victims, abused victims, rape victims, and other forms of mental trauma. Women aren’t having “hystaronics” as Freud would have people believe, but it is more likely their behaviour could be PTSD. Even some/many Jews who suffered in the holocaust also had PTSD, but it wasn’t given that name until several years later. They were just called a victim suffering from the trauma of the Holocaust, while the soldier who told them they were free to leave Auschwitz had shellshock.
Battle fatigue and war hysteria were some of the other names prior to the name Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or PTSD. We started calling it PTSD after we realized that it’s not just people who went to war who suffered from it.
Veteran suicides are extremely complicated and have multiple causes but combat trauma is probably not a big factor because as the article points out:
Though post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is also a potential cause of suicide, Suitt notes that nondeployed troops have a higher risk of suicide, though it is not clear why that would be the case.A U.S. Departments of Veterans Affairs study in 2019 showed that nondeployed veterans had a 61 percent higher suicide risk compared to the general U.S. population, where deployed vets’ risk was 41 percent higher than the general population.
A 2015 study by JAMA Psychiatry also showed no link between combat deployment and suicide. Authors of that study speculated that other factors that could force someone out of the military could also be factors in deaths by suicide.
One thing that always gets overlooked in this discussion is the risk of antidepressant use and how much the VA relies on that as treatment. SSRIs are known to increase suicide risk is some patients but few people seem concerned about it. Antidepressants are such a normal part of life in America that we forget they are not good for you.
As a veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan myself I have never thought about suicide and I don’t have PTSD – even though I’ve had most of the usual struggles most guys have after leaving the military. Most of the other vets I know are doing OK as well. We aren’t ticking time bombs or any of that nonsense.
Yes, meds like Prozac and Zoloft (SSRIs) do increase the risk of suicide, but not everyone who takes them commit suicide. They are still helpful for some people. That said, there needs to be improvements in antidepressant meds.
The estimated number of suicides is a minimum, the report stressed, as there was no statistical data available for Reserve and National Guard deaths prior to 2011. In addition, the statistics do not necessarily include every suicide, since in some cases attribution may be difficult. Overdose deaths, weapon misfires or single-vehicle crashes may not be conclusively linked to suicidal behavior.
Even so, the recorded suicide rates among both active-duty service members and veterans have surged and significantly surpass those in the general population, which itself has been increasing in the US, the study said.
This goes against historical trends. Active-duty personnel usually have lower suicide rates than the general public and these went even lower during wartime in every US conflict before Vietnam. More recent military suicide deaths continued to climb even after combat deaths sharply decreased after 2007.
Yes, meds like Prozac and Zoloft (SSRIs) do increase the risk of suicide, but not everyone who takes them commit suicide. They are still helpful for some people. That said, there needs to be improvements in antidepressant meds.Marijuana!
@write4u Marijuana isn’t for everyone. Some people are allergic to the weed (I and my older son are two) and/or don’t like it (because it triggers breathing issues with us, even if someone else is smoking it, we don’t like it). It really isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. It might help some, but others are allergic to the weed and could be worse than SSRIs. I personally have been Rx Zoloft and I did great with it. So, as I said, some people do fine and others do not.
The study says there is no single cause of the surge and outlines a number of factors that appear to drive soldiers to take their own lives. Some of those are the usual problems that members of armed conflicts face: exposure to physical and moral trauma, stress and burnout, military culture that requires soldiers to toughen up and hide what is perceived as weakness, and difficulties in adjusting to civilian life.
Other factors are specific to the kind of wars that the US has been waging over the past two decades. The wide use of improvised explosive devices against US troops has caused an increase in traumatic brain injuries and polytrauma. At the same time, advances in medical science and the sheer length of the forever wars allow soldiers to live and fight another day, even when they have to deal with chronic pain and other issues from their previous injuries. About a third of wounded soldiers go for at least one more deployment after recovering.
Sure lots of factors and every suicide is unique.
I think you left out a few important ones worth thinking about.
What about the soldier being sent on all these missions that destroy neighborhoods and kill more civilians than combatants, or realizing they aren’t fighting for a moral cause, but rather simply cannon fodder and pawns for War Profiteers? What about coming home and finding all the flag waving ads are just that feel-good facades and then find the VA not being there when they need it?
It would nice to hope it gets better, but . . .
America 2021: The Military and the World Our largest threat: Pakistan. Our alliances: reshuffled by demographics. Terrorism: on the wane (maybe). New frontier for conflict: the Arctic cirlce. Four experts discussBY THE DEFENSE ROUNDTABLE
FROM SUMMER 2010, NO. 17 – 36 MIN READ
Again, veteran suicides are higher among troops that never deployed, so the two comments above don’t really apply.
I notice you don’t provide a source.
www stopsoldiersuicide_org/vet-statsAmong veterans who served during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the suicide rate for those who were undeployed is 48% higher than for veterans who experienced deployment.
Suicide is the second-leading cause of death for post-9/11 veterans, accounting for 22.3% of all deaths.
In 2015 (most recent year data is available), more than 70% of veteran suicides occurred outside Veterans Health Administration care.
The solid line is “adjusted veteran suicide rate”
short gray line under it is “adjusted active duty suicide rate”
long dashed line is “age adjusted civilian suicide rate”
long dotted line is “Hostile Death Rate”. (I bet it would be horrifying see how many of them were actual combatants vs. how my innocent civilians )
So, it’s not like combatant suicide rate is insignificant, to be shrugged off as beside the point. It’s all part and parcel of the same nightmare.
Or?
Lausten you can delete 346001. Between errors and a lil research, some self correction and all the rest.
@thatoneguy. I notice you don’t provide a source.
www stopsoldiersuicide_org/vet-statsAmong veterans who served during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the suicide rate for those who were undeployed is 48% higher than for veterans who experienced deployment.
Suicide is the second-leading cause of death for post-9/11 veterans, accounting for 22.3% of all deaths.
In 2015 (most recent year data is available), more than 70% of veteran suicides occurred outside Veterans Health Administration care.
The solid line is “adjusted veteran suicide rate”
short gray line under it is “adjusted active duty suicide rate”
long dashed line is “age adjusted civilian suicide rate”
long dotted line is “Hostile Death Rate”. (I bet it would be horrifying see how many of them were actual combatants vs. how my innocent civilians )
So, it’s not like combatant suicide rate is insignificant, to be shrugged off as beside the point. It’s all part and parcel of the same nightmare.
Or?