Afghanistan - The Fool's Errand Continues

My oldest daughter and her husband - who is still recovering from wounds he received in Afghanistan the week prior to last Thanksgiving - visited last week.   While he was here, my son-in-law drove to Walter Reed Hospital near Washington, D.C., to see a friend and former roommate who had lost both legs to an IED explosion.  Words cannot express my support and concern for our men and women in uniform.  Likewise, words cannot properly describe my contempt for those who sent America nation to war in a fools errand in Afghanistan and Iraq.  Would that these hubris filled bastard could suffer the same grievous wounds that they have brought upon others.  And unfortunately, the needless deaths and injuries continue.  America needs to leave Afghanistan NOW.  The Seattle Times reports on the latest needless American deaths.  Here are highlights:

Militants killed six Americans, including a female diplomat, and an Afghan doctor Saturday in a pair of attacks in Afghanistan. It was the deadliest day for the United States in the war in eight months.
The violence — hours after the U.S. military’s top officer arrived for consultations with Afghan and U.S.-led coalition officials — illustrates the instability plaguing the nation as foreign forces work to pull nearly all their combat troops out of the country by the end of 2014.

The attacks came just days after insurgents stormed a courthouse, killing more than 46 people in one of the deadliest attacks of the war, now in its 12th year.

The three U.S. service members, two U.S. civilians and the doctor were killed when the group was struck by an explosion while traveling south to donate books to students in a new school in Qalat, the provincial capital of Zabul province, officials and the State Department said.

Officials said the explosion occurred just as a coalition convoy drove past a caravan of vehicles carrying the governor of Zabul province to the same school event. It is unclear whether the attack was aimed at the coalition forces or the governor.

Another U.S. civilian was killed in a separate insurgent attack in eastern Afghanistan, the U.S. military said in a statement.

It was the deadliest day for Americans since Aug. 16, when seven U.S. service members were killed in two attacks in Kandahar province, the birthplace of the Taliban insurgency. Six were killed when their helicopter was shot down by insurgents and one soldier died in a roadside bomb explosion.
Violence in Afghanistan is expected to pick up in the coming weeks and months, as the warm weather spreads. Further, as the NATO troops who have secured the country for the past decade pack up and leave at the end of 2014, the Taliban are expected to intensify efforts to destabilize the Afghan security forces, who are taking over the battle.

The next time you hear some bombastic politician claiming to "support our troops," ask him or her whether they supported the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars.  If they say "yes," they need to be called out as liars in so far as they claim to support our troops.  You do not send out young men and women out on an unwinnable fool's errand and get off claiming that you support the.

Families of Military Suicides Seek White House Condolences

As one who lived through the Vietnam War era, I lost two friends - their family owned the summer home next to ours - who had served in the Army and came back home seriously disturbed emotionally by what they had experienced to the point that they took their own lives. A cousin also served as an Army Captain and volunteered as a nurse in Vietnam. While she never took her own life, her war experience changed her and she was never the again the happy free spirit she once had been. The two brothers who killed themselves were as much war casualties as if they had died on the battlefield. More recently, one of my clients feared for her husband who had done six tours in Iraq and Afghanistan with the Navy special forces. So far, he seems to have rebounded, but the horrors will never leave him. Yet even today, survivors of war related military suicides do not receive the standard condolences from the commander in chief. It is a sad commentary that these other war casualties are denied recognition since most would be alive but for their military service and the horrors they witnessed. The New York Times has a story today that looks at this issue. Here are some highlights:

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Since at least the time of Abraham Lincoln, presidents have sent letters of condolence to the families of service members killed in action, whether the deaths came by hostile fire or in an accident. So after his son killed himself in Iraq in June, Gregg Keesling expected that his family would receive a letter from President Obama. What it got instead was a call from an Army official telling family members that they were not eligible because their son had committed suicide.
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The roots of that policy, which has been passed from administration to administration via White House protocol officers, are murky and probably based in the view that suicide is not an honorable way to die, administration and military officials say. . . . But at a time when the Pentagon is trying to destigmatize mental health care in hopes of stemming a near epidemic of suicide among service members, the question of whether the survivors of military suicides deserve presidential recognition has taken on new significance.
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“These families already feel such shame and so alienated from the military and the country, a letter from the president might give them some comfort, some sense that people recognize their sacrifice,” said Kim Ruocco, director for suicide support for Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors, or TAPS, a military support group. “What better way to eliminate stigma?”
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Through October, the Army, which far and away leads the armed forces in suicides, reported 133 among active-duty soldiers, putting it on pace to surpass last year’s record, 140. The Marine Corps, which has the second-largest number, is also likely to have more suicides than last year, 42. . . . the Army is trying to soften the longstanding sense that psychological problems are a sign of frailty. “We have to reduce the stigma surrounding seeking mental health help,” Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli, the Army vice chief of staff, said this year. “Getting help for emotional problems should be as natural as seeking help for a sprained ankle.”
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After Gregg Keesling’s son, Chancellor, shot himself in a latrine on June 19, the family received a folded flag, a letter from the Army praising their son, a rifle salute at his burial and financial death benefits. But he views the letter of condolence as an important step toward reducing the shame and guilt many survivors feel. Hours before Chancellor, a 25-year-old specialist, killed himself, he had argued with his girlfriend over the phone and then sent a rambling, despondent e-mail message home.
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“I can’t explain how ashamed i am i said some things out of anger,” he wrote. “I can’t cope without each and every one of you there by me the whole way. I feel alone and unappreciated for some odd reason this deployment is ending up to be like the last i thought about killing myself and went to the porti john and chambered a round into my m4 but decided not to pull the trigger. I realize i need help and i need to have family put first. Please forgive me and except my apology.” About 17 hours later, he was dead.
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“My last words to my son were, ‘Be a man and get through it,’ ” Mr. Keesling said, recalling one of dozens of frantic phone calls to Iraq in the hours before Chancellor’s death. “I was the stupid dad. If my son had said, ‘Dad, I’ve broken my leg, I can’t go on,’ I would have understood. But I didn’t understand the mental health side.”
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As one who has contemplated and attempted suicide, I believe that the stigma of seeking mental health care must be diminished. Not only within the LGBT community that suffers from so much discrimination and family rejection, but across the spectrums of society. No one should be pushed to the point where all they can think of is the need to make the pain/loneliness/alienation stop.

The Plight of American Veterans

I have never supported the Iraq War and at the time even wrote about the disaster I believed the Chimperator's hubris would bring about. Time has proven me more than on target on the latter point. Between the millions of homeless and displace Iraqis - the majority of whom are children - and the horrifically wounded U.S. casualties, the war has been all that I feared. Adding to my dismay, however, is the shabby treatment veterans are receiving on their return home, be it inadequate mental health care or other needed support. So many of the young military members never signed on for the nightmare they have encountered, some of whom are headed back to third deployments. This New York Times column well describes the problem:

As an unpopular, ill-planned war in Iraq grinds on inconclusively, it can be a bleak time to be a veteran. There is little outright hostility toward returning military personnel these days; few Americans are reviling them as “baby killers” or blaming them for a botched war of choice launched by the White House. Indeed, both Congress and the White House have been hymning their praises in the run-up to Veterans Day. But all too often, soldiers who return from Iraq or Afghanistan — and those who served in Vietnam or Korea — have been left to fend for themselves with little help from the government.

Recent surveys have painted an appalling picture. Almost half a million of the nation’s 24 million veterans were homeless at some point during 2006, and while only a few hundred from Iraq or Afghanistan have turned up homeless so far, aid groups are bracing themselves for a tsunamilike upsurge in coming years. Tens of thousands of reservists and National Guard troops, whose jobs were supposedly protected while they were at war, were denied prompt re-employment upon their return or else lost seniority, pay and other benefits. Some 1.8 million veterans were unable to get care in veterans’ facilities in 2004 and lacked health insurance to pay for care elsewhere. Meanwhile, veterans seeking disability payments faced huge backlogs and inordinate delays in getting claims and appeals processed.

Thus far, more than 4,000 American soldiers have been killed in Iraq or Afghanistan, many more than died in the almost-bloodless Persian Gulf war, but only a fraction of the body counts in Vietnam (58,000) or Korea (36,000). A higher percentage of wounded soldiers are surviving the current conflicts with grievous injuries, their lives saved by body armor, advances in battlefield medicine and prompt evacuation. A study issued last week estimated that the long-term costs of their medical care and disability benefits could exceed the amount spent so far in prosecuting the war in Iraq.