You Tube photo from "Suicide, Veterans & PTSD" with "Save a Warriors" Jake Clark, A CNN documentary
Question, why are so many veterans of our wars, including those still in the military committing suicide? Apparently, more than 22 veterans each day according to the Department of Veterans Affairs.
I certainly don't have a definitive answer although I can speculate on some possible reasons.
What screams loudly in this head, these guys-maybe some women-just can't re-engage with the superficial, indifferent, disconnected society-back in the "world"- they've been thrust back into returning home compared with the shared life and death ordeal they faced each day relying on the men next to them just to survive in war.
I've heard of some GI's re-upping choosing to go back in the war zone presumably to recapture that "lost" connection they had with the men they fought with. Maybe to them it returns a sort of meaning to their lives.
In civilian life people working together during a difficult ordeal necessarily brings them closer together.
Parents raising kids in any circumstances but particularly those with economic hardships, unpaid bills, illnesses while doing it all together may not be a life and death struggle, but the daily shared ordeal does bring them closer.
So again, maybe with many distraught veterans, whether it's conscious or not, need that brotherhood of men that connects them with each other when fighting in a war or else they become "lost' returning home to bland, mundane America.
For sure there are many other considerations to what some refer to as an epidemic of military suicides, to wit; mental instability that was there to begin with, PTSD that some never recover from, joblessness, unemployment, divorce, homelessness are likely causes to some taking their own lives.
Some may be distraught over serious war wounds, physical incapacity, inadequate medical attention from the VA, or a feeling of being discarded after serving in the military.
Maybe there's a realization the wars we fight are not meant to bring the people in war zones "freedom and democracy", that the "enemy" we fight keeps morphing in this "war on terror", from al Qaeda, Taliban, ISIS, terrorists, insurgents, Sunni's, Shiite's and when does it all end? We've been in Afghanistan 14 years, the war in Iraq was supposed to have ended in 2011 when all the troops were sent home. What are we doing back in there? Maybe it was all for nothing!
Maybe none of the above fits the reality many veterans faced who ended their own lives.
I don't know. I Do know it is unforgiveable to put the military in harm's way unnecessarily. The Viet Nam war killed over 50,000 Americans and probably over a million Vietnamese, many innocents all based on the false flag Tonkin Gulf incident. The more recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are perfect examples of putting the military in harm's way unnecessarily; certainly not in defense of the country.
As to those who authorized these wars? They are war criminals and though they may never face prosecution for these crimes they bear full responsibility for all who lost their lives in these unnecessary conflicts, including those who took their own lives after they left the military.
