Iraq Veterans vulnerable to commit suicide

John99: "you dont support them at all."

For what reason(s) do you say that?

 

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Well lets see....

You do not do it verbally so i cannot see you doing it in reality either. But the truth is that you are not the type and that would probably hold true no matter where you were from.

 

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-Michael Bowman, Father of Spec. Timothy Noble Bowman in House Testimony

John99: "You do not [support our troops] verbally"

What does supporting our troops verbally entail in your opinion?

"you are not the type"

How do you define "the type"?

 

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Well, i dont want to bad mouth you because everyone has some kind of redeeming quality.

 

I'm not so much interested in your opinion of me, as in your concept of supporting our military veterans (I happen to be one, incidentally).

 

Well i would rather avoid gratuitous disparaging remarks but TBH your not as intelligent as you perceive yourself to be. This does not make you a bad person but there is the presence of delusion.

 

Please pardon my ignorance, but I'm not pressing you about your appraisal of me.

Instead, I'm trying to learn specifically about your ideals of support for the troops, which is more topical and interesting to me. You are inferring that I fall short of something that you haven't defined here.

 

My discussion here with John99 may illustrate how such a topic as this is repressed in a militarizing society. The psychological casualties of wrongful war are discomforting, and their examination may be offensive to sentiments of nationalism that are more superficial than Revolutionary and founding USAmerican and democratic ideals. Troubled soldiers are so troubling to what I consider a superficial nationalism, that they are cruelly ignored.

 

Again you assume too much in order to support an agenda. The reality is that i dont want to make this about you, suffice it to say that perhaps some soul searching on your part is in order.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,354676,00.html

This does not apply to you because most likely you have not seen a lot as far as personally witnessing hardship and the negative aspect of human existence. There are people who do save live and put themselves at risk for very little recognition or reward and this takes its toll on people. Some can cope better than others but it is hard to explain to someone who has never had to deal with these things.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/132887

 

John99: "Some can cope better than others but it is hard to explain to someone who has never had to deal with [hardship and the negative aspect of human existence]."

You are making considerable assumptions about me, while avoiding my questions about your criteria. Closer to topic, regarding your FoxNews and Newsweek links:

That's considerably smaller than the evident suicide rate among Iraq and Afghanistan veterans.

 

I really dont know how it boils down when looked at from a percentage.

This is from one of your links:

I knew someone personally who went to war almost ever day as a police officer and saw things that most people would never imagine. These people are human, do you want to imagine a perfect world with perfect people? I really dont know what to tell you but perhaps your life is\was a bed of roses.

 

Having directly experienced war very personally, I don't hold much illusion of a perfect world. I'd be interested to move on from inferences about what you seem to assume to be my sheltered existence, to examining both the suicide rates of our veterans, and our obvious national avoidance of confronting the scope and causation of the epidemic. It is interesting to me how you have diverted the discussion towards my assumed naïveté and away from any challenge to define your standards of patriotic or military credibility. I'm curious if that's random, or part of the cultural recoil we generally have in the USA today, away from examining the darker side of the wars we have recently committed each other to.

 

Well then elaborate on it and offer some kind of proof.

 

I am not so sure what your intent is.

I didnt want to come right out and say it but these people, and as an example going to a house and telling a parent that their four year old child (who you just saw at a crime scene) is dead. They are doing a job that you cannot do or just dont want to do.

 

John99: "elaborate on [your war experience] and offer some kind of proof."

I grew up in Beirut in the late 70s/early 80s. I see no point in offering you proof.

"These people are doing a job [informing survivors of a death] that you cannot do or just dont want to do."

I've done so, don't want to, but would again if necessary. Can we get back on topic please? While you may be offering an example of how hard it is for USAmericans to confront this topic, there are already plenty of similar examples in this thread, along with its relegation to the cesspool, which I think was rash. With a little perseverance, I suspect a conversation such as this may break some ground.

 

And? Do you want to talk about it?

 

Start a separate thread if that separate topic sufficiently interests you, and I'll respond... tomorrow (signing off for now):sleep:

 

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:bump:

Soldiers' Suicide Rate On Pace to Set Record​

 

CNN: "A record number of soldiers committed suicide last year -- at least 133, the Army said. That was up from at least 115 in 2007, which was itself a record since the Pentagon began keeping statistics on suicide in 1980."