Michael Ventura: Letters at 3AM: About 18 a Day
Letters at 3AM: About 18 a Day
About 18 U.S. veterans commit suicide on an average day
BY MICHAEL VENTURA,
FRI., JULY 1, 2011
ILLUSTRATION BY JASON STOUT
"About 18 veterans commit suicide on an average
day" (The New York Times, May 19, p.26).
These are young veterans mostly, some of the 1.6
million who've served in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The report continues: "Benefits claims are
supposed to be dealt with in days or weeks, but
it takes an average of more than four years to
fully adjudicate a mental health claim. When a
veteran appeals a disability rating, the process
bogs down drastically. The problem is an
overwhelmed bureaucracy and a chronic inadequacy of resources and planning."
About 18 a day comes to about 6,570 dead veterans a year.
According to President Obama's June 22 speech, we
have lost "nearly 4,500" in Iraq and "over 1,500"
in Afghanistan, about 6,000 in nearly 10 years of
war. I found no figures as to how long we've been
losing so many vets to suicide, but just one
year's count is more than a decade's dead in two
wars. They're killing themselves with more speed
and fury, and in greater numbers, than during 10
years of combined mayhem by Iraqis, the Taliban, and al Qaeda.
The president did mention that many vets "still
battle the demons that follow them home," and he
gave the usual lip service, promising veterans,
"We will keep our sacred trust with you."
Note his care to use the future tense. Two and a
half years into his administration and it still
takes more than four years to offer help to a
traumatized veteran. In neglect, many end their
sufferings at the rate of about 18 a day a
toll, in one year, roughly twice that of those who died in the Twin Towers.
This is called a "war on terror"? It is a war
that terrorizes our veterans at a terrible cost
to their sanity and their lives.
As Rachel Maddow ably reported in her MSNBC
broadcast after Obama's speech, when he took
office in January 2009, there were 34,000
American troops stationed in Afghanistan. By
December that year, Obama increased the number to
68,000. On Dec. 1, 2009, he announced his
"surge," an additional 33,000 troops, and
promised to pull them out starting in July 2011.
Next month. In his June 22 speech, Obama made it
clear that only the "surge" troops are being
extracted 10,000 this year and the rest by
September 2012, when, as Maddow reported, we will
still have "double the number [of troops in
Afghanistan] that we had when Obama took office."
When will they come home? Obama said 2014.
Has there ever been a war in which a country lost
more troops at home and by their own hands than
on the battlefield? Tens of billions of dollars
are spent on new weapons development while the
Veterans Benefits Administration is understaffed
and underfunded. What words could adequately
describe such a measure of disgrace?
It must be remembered and history will remember
that President Obama justified his escalation
of war with a lie as egregious as any told by
George W. Bush. On Dec. 1, 2009, Obama outlined
"three core elements" of his strategy, one of
which was "an effective partnership with
Pakistan." He gave the strong impression of
having secured that partnership. (That's Obama's
style of lying: not directly, but by giving his
audience an impression that creates a lie in the air rather than in his mouth.)
He knew better. Obama was told explicitly that
Pakistan wanted no part of it. Two months before
his "surge" speech, "the head of Pakistan's chief
spy agency ... met with senior officials at the
Central Intelligence Agency ... in Washington,
where he argued against sending more troops to
Afghanistan" (The New York Times, Oct. 6, 2009,
p.1). "Pakistani generals and diplomats argue ...
[that] America must seek a high-level political
settlement with its Taliban enemies" (The Economist, Nov. 28, 2009, p.27).
Not three weeks after Obama announced the
escalation and Pakistan's newly committed
alliance, "parts of the Pakistani military and
intelligence services [mounted] what American
officials ... describe as a campaign to harass
American diplomats [in Pakistan]. ... American
helicopters used by Pakistan to fight militants
can no longer be serviced because visas for 14
American mechanics have not been approved" (The
New York Times, Dec. 17, 2009, p.1). When
queried, Pakistan shrugged. "Pakistani officials
acknowledged the situation but said the menacing
atmosphere resulted from American arrogance."
It's never gotten better. Sometimes the
Pakistanis make gestures. Usually they make
trouble. I have three manila envelops thick with
printouts for documentation. Pakistan's only
consistent commitment to America has been to take
the money that China loans us. Lately, they've
gone directly to the source: "China has agreed to
immediately provide 50 JF-17 fighter jets to
Pakistan," (The New York Times, May 20, p.8). One
winces to think of China's leaders laughing as
Obama drives Pakistan into their arms so that
they, in turn, can use Pakistan to threaten their only regional rival, India.
"Pakistan Pushes for Drastic Cuts in C.I.A.
Activity" (The New York Times, April 12, p.1).
Just 19 days later, without telling Pakistan,
U.S. Navy Seals attacked and executed Osama bin
Laden where he lived "comfortably within walking
distance of the Pakistan Military Academy" (The
Week, May 20, p.8). Pakistan responded with fury:
"Pakistan Arrests C.I.A. Informants in Bin Laden
Raid" (The New York Times, June 15, p.1). Good
riddance to bin Laden, at last, but Pakistan's
reaction was to arrest Pakistanis who helped make
it possible. That is not an ally. Yet President
Obama once assured us that Pakistan was with the
program and essential to victory in Afghanistan.
If they are essential, victory is impossible; if
not, one must wonder why Obama said it.
Pakistan was notably downplayed in Obama's June
22 speech. What has changed? The White House
isn't saying. In fact, departing Secretary of
Defense Robert M. Gates emphasized "it was
critical for the United States to maintain ties
with Pakistan" (The New York Times, June 17,
p.12). Still, in the face of dead end after dead
end, Obama's June 22 speech extends our Afghan
presence to 2014, while 18 veterans a day take
their own lives. At the present rate, that
amounts to 19,710 vets dead by the end of 2014.
And what are we defending? "Family members of
[Afghan] President Hamid Karzai and his top
officials took millions from the Kabul Bank ...
Karzai's brother took $18 million, the bank's CEO
took another $18 million, and a vice president's
relatives got another $19 million" (The Week,
April 8, p.9). Meanwhile, this headline: "In
Reversal, Poppy Crop Is Expanding" (The New York
Times, April 19, p.8). In what is the longest war
of our history, we have not even checked
Afghanistan's production of heroin. This is what
Obama will continue to fight for until at least
2014? So far we have expended $1.1 trillion on
this war, and "the cost of keeping a single
soldier on the ground now exceeds $500,000 a
year" (The Economist, Jan. 1, p.11).
Do the math: $500,000 a year times at least
another 60,000 for at least another three years.
All of it borrowed. Plus 18 American veterans a
day who die by their own hands and a Veterans
Benefits Administration too understaffed, too
under[re]sourced, and too mismanaged to help.
In a long life of disgusting political
situations, I've found nothing more disgusting
than America's liberals cowed into acquiescence
because they don't wish to demonstrate against
the United States' first black president. The
situation is outrageous. The general silence of
liberals is so disgusting a betrayal that mere
words cannot suffice to gauge our portion of shame.
Had George W. Bush done the same, there would
have been protests, demonstrations, something
something to retrieve some fragment of honor for
this contradictory, confused, wounded, baffled country. But there is nothing.
Said Shakespeare, "Nothing will come of nothing."
forwarded by Kathleen Hernandez of Veterans for Peace, who says:
Jul 03, 2011, 03:13 am
ABOUT 18 A DAY
It is despicable that so many have died, ours and
theirs. As to has there ever been another war
where so many died at their own hand check the
statistics of the Vietnam War where almost 60,000
US troops died in country. And yet more then that
have died after having returned stateside.
As far as stemming the flow of heroin from
Afghanistan I have seen more addiction to heroin
and deaths of youths in the years we have been
occupying Afghanistan then ever before in my
village of Topanga Canyon in Los Angeles CA.
I have for the last seven years put up the
Veterans For Peace Arlington West Memorial to the
human cost of war along the sands of the Pacific
Ocean in Santa Monica, CA
www.arlingtonwestsantamonica.org and during that
time have seen the pain in the eyes of too many
troops as I listen to their stories of their
dying brothers and sisters, I have cried along
with them and held them in my arms, and too their
mothers, fathers and children as they find what
little solace they can placing a photo and a card
with the name of their loved one in the tear spent sand.
And in that time I have feared what will happen
to those burdened soldiers as they slump against
the pier pilings before turning away in silent
agony to face an uncaring crowd of beach goers
that don't even care enough to help lift symbolic
coffins of those dead each week as we close the memorial down each Sunday.
America Wake Up. This is all the human cost of war profiteering.
In the words of Gen. Smedley Butler; "War Is A Racket".
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