Suicide Rates Higher among Reservists and National Guard
According to the Pentagon, the suicide rate is higher among the 28% of front line troops who are reservists and National Guard (http://www.nextgov.com/nextgov/ng_20110119_4296.php). Troops mobilized to active duty from the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Reserves also sign an eight year contract. Historically there has been a 24 month cumulative deployment limit on reservists and National Guard. This was reversed, owing to military manpower shortages, following the invasion of Iraq. Secretary of Defense Gates has subsequently implemented a cumulative twelve month limitation for National Guard deployed in the Middle East.
Medicating Troops We Send into Combat
While the stress of urban and guerrilla warfare and high stress deployment schedules clearly play a role in high GI suicide rates, the Pentagon's insane policy of returning servicemen with TBI, PTSD and clinical depression to the battlefield -- many while still on one or more psychotropic medications -- clearly compounds the problem. A July 2010 Army report reveals that one-third of all active-duty suicides involve prescription drugs.
How can this be happening? Why is the US government sending troops into combat under the influence of powerful psychoactive drugs? In past conflicts, there has always been an absolute taboo against servicemen on psychotropic medication serving in combat. This relates in large part to common side effects of antidepressants and antipsychotics -- dizziness, sedation, lack of coordination and cognitive dulling -- that place both the soldier himself and his team at serious risk in high intensity urban warfare that requires split second decision making.
Dr Grace Jackson, a former Navy psychiatrist, resigned her commission because she believes that US Central Command (CENTCOM) is destroying our defense force by sending troops into battle on psychotropic medication. Likewise both Dr Greg Smith, a Los Angeles pain and prescription drug abuse specialist, and Ithaca psychiatrist Dr Peter Breggin have testified to Congress with similar concerns (http://www.nextgov.com/nextgov/ng_20110118_8944.php).
Insufficient Manpower to Fight Seven Wars
A close look at Department of Defense manpower figures makes it pretty obvious that the Pentagon is pursuing this insane policy for the same reason that they are subjecting troops to unpredictable, high stress deployment schedules. Both Bush and Obama are determined to circumvent the immense unpopularity of the War on Terror by relying on an all-volunteer army (it was the universality of the draft -- especially among the well-educated middle class -- that fueled the anti-Vietnam War movement). Unfortunately this all-volunteer army has proved totally inadequate to meet the manpower needs of a permanent imperial war on seven fronts.
According to Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, US forces are slated to remain in Iraq for at least one more year and could remain an occupying force in Afghanistan until 2024. The US currently has 90,000 troops in Afghanistan and 44,000 in Iraq http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/06/22/world/asia/american-forces-in-afghanistan-and-iraq.html
This is on top of more than two million veterans already deployed to the Middle East and discharged -- and more than 160,000 active duty servicemen deployed to other countries targeted under Operation Enduring Freedom (i.e. against "terrorists" in the Philippines, Columbia, and the Horn of Africa) and on military bases in other parts of the world.
All this is taking place in a decade where the percentage of 18 to 24 year olds continues to decline in proportion to the rest of the population -- and where recruitment is nose diving, owing to growing popular opposition to the War on Terror.
Troop deployments by region
- Africa 4,000
- Asia 61,000
- Europe 80,000
- Kuwait 10,000
- Qatar 8,000
- Bahrain 1,500
- Central and South America (including Guantanamo): 2,000
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