Allow a little venting of spleen here: The violence at Camp Liberty today in Iraq, where an American active duty servicemember allegedly opened fire on others at the stress clinic, a location where other servicemembers go for counseling, killing 5 at 2:00 p.m. local time -- if we're shocked that this happened, that's okay; but seriously, America-- why are we still "surprised"?!
Here's 10 reasons NOT to be surprised, though feel free to continue to be shocked:
1. Tours are too long, putting considerable and unprecedented strain on the all-volunteer military. The AP reports, "The U.S. military is coping with a growing number of stress cases among
soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan - many of whom are on their third or
fourth combat tours. Some studies suggest that about 15 percent of
soldiers returning from Iraq suffer from some sort of emotional
problems." The ones who initially deployed? Strong and willing. But as the tours wore on, how many stayed that way? Certainly not everybody.
2. Resources for stress management are inadequate, and there's often peer pressure not to make use or take advantage of them -- and then the broader question: what are we really offering to help soldiers heal? Is there anything in the conventional medical world that's actually working? There's talk therapy and there's medication, and those who follow this topic in-depth know that there are problems with either or both of those approaches. Anecdotally, of the three combat veterans whose lives I follow most closely, all three of whom had recently pronounced substantial healing -- two of the three who relied on the most conventional approaches -- were re-hospitalized within the past month for psychiatric reasons, each within several weeks of pronouncing how much better they were doing, thanks to their course of treatment. (The third combat veteran, who follows a less conventional path, is actually truly doing better -- or so it would currently seem.) When it comes to combat-based PTSD, the "cure," such as it is -- is a long way off -- particularly if we only look along conventional channels.
3. Access to firearms is...ummm...not an issue: they're everywhere. It's war, and we're armed to the teeth. It's part of what we do. But carrying a weapon in a stress clinic? Doesn't seem on the face of it to be a wise safety choice;
4. Workplace violence is a fact of civilian life, too: OSHA reports that homicide is the fourth leading cause of workplace fatalities. On an average workday, according to one site, "three people will be murdered on the job in the U.S." Annually, "one million workers are assaulted, and more than 1,000 are murdered." Concerns are that half these cases go unreported, so the figures might even be doubled. Mondays, in fact -- today when the Camp Liberty incident took place is a Monday, after all -- are a prime time for incidents to take place. Something about people stewing about their real or imaginary mistreatment over the weekend, and coming back in and deciding to "do something about it." Read the cases: Monday is often when disgruntled American workers, at the very least, choose to settle the score;
5. Sleep deprivation is a chronic problem in the over-extended military. As a technique for inducing symptoms along the spectrum from abject misery to forms of psychosis, it's effective enough that it's used (by the U.S.) as a form of torture, like waterboarding. Going without sleep, which the military chronically does, puts soldiers at risk on a regular basis. Not that there are any easy answers to this, but that needs to be taken into account. Not sleeping is very dangerous to your health: and if to yours, by extension to those around you, too. Experts like veterans advocate Jonathan Shay, M.D., Ph.D. have long warned about the dangers of exhaustion and sleep-deprivation. It's time to pay greater attention;
6. Talking heads and pundits attempt to minimize the problem by saying, it's only the fifth case of soldiers killing one another since the war began but REALLY -- are they serious?! How about adding the qualifier, "known" case -- as in, proven. (Even the New York Times said, more accurately, "The killing of American troops by their fellow soldiers is infrequent, but not unheard of.") Think of the many cases of noncombat deaths in Iraq. How many of these, because of insufficient, inadequate, or misguided investigations -- or cover-ups -- might turn out to be soldier upon soldier violence, if we but knew the facts? A percentage of the noncombat deaths are murders, not just accidents or suicide.
7. Felony waivers. While many -- or most -- of the military may be fine and upstanding individuals -- better, in fact, than most of their less patriotric, more self-centered peers -- the reality is, as the war continues, an increasing few who have less savory backgrounds or mental states are being given waivers and allowed to join anyway -- then deployed with the rest of the troops, and put under the same types of strain, which perhaps they don't bear very well -- or as well as their peers;
8. If recruiter suicides are up (and they are) -- recruiters being in a good position to know the true costs of going to war on the troops -- and suicide is effectively giving up on their being a solution to one's problems -- shouldn't this ring some greater warning bell than it has, that perhaps we're asking people to do and to sacrifice, far beyond their actual ability to?
9. We can't discount the fact that some people are just unbalanced -- and some of the ones who are, unavoidably, also serve in the military. The last well-publicized statistic on the subject was that roughly 10% of the (overall) population suffers from mental illness. Some of these people are in the military, and under stresses and strains greater than most of us have ever endured, some will snap. that in itself should not really...surprise us. It's not a diss against the military: it's a fact of life. If anything their challenges are stronger than anyone else's.
10. Interpersonal violence and suicide are both extreme versions of "lashing out" at what's perceived to be an unjust fate. Domestic violence rates in the military ARE worthy of some "shock 'n awe" of their own. During the same news cycle, where the Camp Liberty incident is being broadcast across all possible news outlets, other, equally horrendous incidents are also happening among servicemembers and veterans -- horrendous to the victims and their families, as well as to the families of those who commit the crimes. Here's an example of the same from today's news cycle, though it's all been pushed off the page by the greater prominence of the Baghdad story. The Colorado Springs Gazette reports that Thomas Woolly, 24, was arrested in the shooting death of a 19-year-old woman. As the Gazette describes, "Woolly ... was a heavy machine gunner in the 4th Infantry Division's 2nd Battalion, 12th Infantry Regiment. Members of the 500-soldier unit, nicknamed the Lethal Warriors, have
been involved in stabbings, beatings, brawls, domestic violence,
shootings, at least two attempted murders and four homicides in
Colorado Springs. Another soldier who served with the unit in Iraq has
been accused of murder in California. The unit has also been plagued by drug abuse and suicide..."
By bringing this up -- that this violence might be "shocking," but surely shouldn't be "surprising" -- it isn't intended to single out servicemembers or veterans as "bad" -- if anything, they're under abnormally large stressors. It is to say, this stuff happens -- not always as well broadcast as when it happens in a group. But it happens all the same. Forgetting even Iraq and Afghanistan for the moment -- across AMERICA -- do we honestly believe that fewer than five people -- including the servicemembers and veterans involved -- had their lives in actual, mortal danger from incidents like this? (In the Woolly incident above, for example, one woman was killed, but another one was injured, according to published reports.)
Again, if we were but able to "see" across the broad expanse of all the people this affects, and into all their homes and lives, even on one given day, I think we might be quite surprised to see the continuing emotional toll and strain that combat stress and its aftermath produces. Continuing to look at incidents like whatever happened at Camp Liberty today -- as the facts continue to come out, over time -- as "isolated" incidents, instead of a very visible part of the mostly in-visible spectrum of pain and suffering -- only allows us to stay in the dark on this topic a little longer than we should.
For the health of servicemembers, veterans and their families, it's time to start admitting what a difficult problem we have: and one that takes more than lip service, and conventional modes of treatment, to "handle" and ultimately to "solve."
