As we left the event, Tank got word that Jamie committed suicide today. Fuck me, that hurts. The kid — yes, I consider 43 year old guys as my kids — is gone in part because of the stupid fucking wars we’ve been fighting for 25 goddamn years. This tears a hole in the souls of those who loved him that is not easily healed.
His death, so needless, inspires me to do more to stop needless wars that result in the deaths of men, women and children in countries like Iran, Syria, Vietnam and Iraq. My prayers are with his wife and children.
The post-9/11 generation of veterans carries a disproportionate share of this burden. The suicide rate among veterans aged 18–34 has more than doubled since the wars began, and suicide is now the second-leading cause of death for post-9/11 veterans. Strikingly, among veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, those who were never deployed have a suicide rate 48% higher than those who were — suggesting the crisis is rooted not simply in combat trauma but in something deeper about the experience of military service, transition to civilian life, and the sense of purpose that evaporates when service ends. This is compounded by a profound sense of moral injury: 73% of veterans polled said the US withdrawal from Afghanistan negatively affected the way they view America’s legacy in the War on Terror — a wound of meaning, not just of memory.
Research shows that post-9/11 veterans with traumatic brain injury — affecting roughly one in five of all who served — experienced suicide rates peaking at 100 deaths per 100,000, five times the general US adult rate. For a country that has spent more than two decades asking its military to bear the entire weight of its foreign policy while the civilian population remained largely untouched by sacrifice, the veteran suicide epidemic is both a public health catastrophe and a profound moral reckoning.
Henry Kissinger, the first Jewish secretary of state — ‘Military men are just dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy.’
That’s observably how most US politicians feel. Use ’em and throw ’em away. Suicide, PTSD, homelessness. Oh, but we’ll gladly fund the pensions for Israeli Defense Force soldiers. There’s a reason for the endless wars in the Middle East and the resulting trauma to and abandonment of our warriors. It wears a tiny hat …
h/t WRSA for graphic.
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