Upset over a breakup with his girlfriend, Tennessee National Guardsman Rusty Rumley went to his former girlfriend's apartment building and killed her mother and current boyfriend as well as a neighbor and friend. Rumley later took his own life. (Richmond Times-Dispatch)
An Iraq war veteran who was given a bad-conduct discharge in 2006 told police he tried to rape an Auburn University student her before he shot her, according to documents read in court Monday as several thousand of her peers gathered for a memorial service. (Army Times)
All too often, we're seeing media stories like these, of terrible crimes committed by current troops or by veterans of the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan. My heart goes out to the families of the victims. But I am also deeply concerned that as coverage of these incidents increases, the 1.6 million Iraq and Afghanistan veterans who have returned home from war will have to bear the burden of Rambo stereotypes.
In today's 24-hour news environment, a few incidents can all too easily be made to seem like a new trend. In January, The New York Times ran a sensational piece about the supposedly elevated homicide rate among Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. This kind of cheap-shot reporting stigmatizes a generation who deserve to be proud of their service. From veterans and experts, the Times received a lot of well-deserved flak. Rather than seek out the shocking news hook, the media should be addressing the real issues.
One issue is misidentified and untreated mental health issues. At least 30 to 40% of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, or about half a million people, will face serious mental health injuries. But significant barriers to treatment remain, especially for troops whose mental health injuries have been misdiagnosed as 'personality disorders' by the military. These untreated mental health issues can and do lead to unemployment, homelessness, domestic violence, substance abuse, and suicide.
The other issue is our lowered standards for entrance into the military. This issue has a direct bearing on one of the stories I quoted at the beginning of this article. Despite a 2002 felony conviction of conspiracy to sell stolen firearms which carried a two-year sentence, Rusty Rumley was allowed to enlist in the Tennessee National Guard with a federal criminal record. His prior service in the Army also indicated a red flag: having gone AWOL shortly after joining, leading to discharge.
It's unclear why Rumley was allowed to enlist with this kind of a record, or whether Rumley received a waiver for his past misconduct. But since 2004, the Army has increased its use of waivers for 'serious criminal misconduct.' Of the Army's active and reserve recruits in FY2007, 12 percent were granted waivers for criminal convictions, including felonies. These new waivers are part of a troubling military-wide pattern. We're spending $5 billion a year on recruitment and retention, but lowering standards in terms of age, education, and aptitude. There's no way to lower standards without increasing the risk of "bad apples" - and we're starting to see those effects already.
According to the Army, however, these waivers aren't a problem. Although it's true that many people who entered the military using moral waivers are succeeding, many others are not. Lower-caliber enlistees are much more likely to drop out in their first year. And a recent report by the FBI and the Army's Criminal Investigation Command links looser recruiting standards and more criminal waivers to an increase in gang-related activity in the military.
The core problem here is that this war has been fought without the kind of shared sacrifice made during previous wars. Less than one half of one percent of Americans have served in Iraq or Afghanistan, compared to the 12% of Americans who served during WWII. We've responded to the troop shortage by putting an unfair burden on the force we have: multiple, extended combat tours; inadequate dwell-time between deployments; abuse of Stop-Loss orders and the Individual Ready Reserve (IRR); and overextension of the National Guard and Reserves.
But telling the American people that war requires real sacrifice isn't a popular talking point. Politicians who want us to continue our presence in Iraq need to talk seriously about how we're going to maintain our troop levels and our troop quality. Those who support a rapid drawdown of our forces in Iraq need to discuss how we're going to rebuild the military that's been pushed to the brink by five years of a two-front war on the cheap. And no matter where you sit on the political spectrum, we need to do a better job of caring for the veterans of these wars when they come home.
Follow Paul Rieckhoff on Twitter: www.twitter.com/PaulRieckhoff
BTW- There is a national group of folks who have "adopted" groups of soldiers and or individuals and support them with "Care" packages, letters, phone calls, etc. It's called "Soldiers Angels." I'm sure you can find it on the web.
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71-72
It could be ridiculously funny were it NOT so pathetically INSANE and STUPID.
I'll try to send something to IAVA soon, sir, and thank you.
I am one for raising the attention on the major issue of our soldiers, we must and our leaders must call for us to sacrifice (not go shopping) and take care of their needs.
It is imperative that we stop prosecuting some soldiers who have made a split second decision (as they are trained to do) we must provide the correct benefits to deal with the body and the mind and get politics out of it, we must find ways to house the homeless and support the families. I will be going to a small meeting of Blue Star Moms locally which should be good for me, but we need support for the families in crisis.
I demand that our press, including Huffington, have headlines that predominately celebrate and support the troops rather than focus on a few who have gone off in an errant way.
I strongly suggest that people not familiar with what happens to the minds of our young soldiers read "On Killing" to realize that this is what they are trained to do.
I strongly suggest that people realize that Army recruiters set up in the poor districts, near high schools and have to make quotas.
We are savaging our 17-18 year olds and I don't see many volunteers from Harvard or Yale or UC California, they are taking our young men and women who have little opportunity and are most volunerable. Sometimes it is a great thing, sometimes it is not.
But, the press owes our troops the right press coverage not lurid details, since we don't even get to see our wounded, our healed and mainstreamed soldiers, the stories being written rarely celebrate anything for these men and women who worked 20 hours a day 5 days straight and then crash on their cots (like my son just told me after getting back to base).
Recommendation: find a ground, support someone, a squad, a family, hold out hope and love for our troops and compassion for them all.
My brother in law won the Silver Star in Vietnam. He saved his platoon from ambush. He killed himself a year after his return.
I have nothing but respect for the men and women who wear the uniforms of our services. These were my friends, my protectors. But I am deeply concerned with the lack of care they are receiving on returning from combat. It takes no great imagination to realize that repeated combat deployments, in an unrelenting hostile situation, will take it's toll on a persons mental and physical well being. In Vietnam, we fought for a year (unless we chose to re-up) and then came home. We were not generally on the line 24/7, in a fight for our lives every minute of the day. These people are, and they deserve not only all the help we can give them to repair the damage, but all of the help we can give them to get them home and back to their families and loved ones.
I can only add that I think we are just seeing the tip of the iceberg. What we are putting our soldiers through is unconscionable, and we will see this play out in the years to come. Can we really expect to have our soldiers do two, three or more deployments, and return as if nothing had happened?
Isn't the yellow magnet on my SUV enough?
You say you want my kids and my money too?
That's were you lose me Paul. The war is all right as long as I don't have to pay for it in anyway. Besides, you volunteered for it. We have a right to screw you all into the ground, an inch at a time.
Never mind the duties you were owed, the Senate and Congress stuck a finger in the air and swallowed the 935 lies the Bush Administration put out, took a vote and committed you to an open ended war.
Political courage has nothing to do with Iraq or supporting the troops.
I am sorry that you and your generation of patriots have been failed. Words have no meaning in the face of service to the point of death, without justification.
But the Republicans have soul-searching to do as well.
No one has been our there recruiting new troops. We leave that to the military outlets in offices and in strip malls around the country. And we let Code Pink be their suburban USO. But no politician, including President Bush, has ever actually asked people to enlist.
I can understand somewhat (only somewhat) why Bush has refrained. It would indeed invite a kind of 60s style renaissance of "ho,ho, Ho Chi Minh." But no one has. Not John Kerry who likes to wax eloquent about how the goverment isn't funding enough flak jackets (was he talking about jackets for the troops or his own use?)
And so on.
But what our soldiers need most of all is other soldiers. Relief troops. Second shift. Somebody who can take over so this shift can come home and rest. And they need other soldiers who can understand what is was like, after it's all over. Others to share the burden of memory of both the tragedies and the challenges as well as the achievements. They need other soldiers to be witnesses to the fact that there were achievements, though we hear little of them.
I see bumper stickers all the time of "I support the troops" and see them from both parties. Saw one yesterday saying "I support the troops, but question the policy." We have lots of bumper stickers over here about our feelings. But what we need is fewer bumper stickers and more volunteers.
Cause the help they need is over there.
We already are sacrificing. Try not giving up 30-50% of your income and see how free you really are. Try not paying $3 a gallon in gas. Try not having the value of what you earn and save whittled away little by little by a central bank that doesn't understand inflation.
"Why do we even need a standing army in the first place?"
We live in the real world. How about you?
The Answer is simple: Profits.
War is Big Business in the modern world.
Don't have gas for the car. Maybe you should rearrange your priorities before you ask your country to abandon Iraq. Whatever the wisdom on invading Iraq (something that history will have to judge), it would be obscenely immoral to just abandon the Iraqi people to whatever happenstance fate awaits them if we leave. You're obviously not a friend of "peace."
When our brave soldiers come home, some people will be quick to jump forward and feel sorry for them. Why not let them win instead? Why not be proud of them? Indeed, why wait. Why not just be proud of them now? They put their lives on the line for a nobel cause. The US eliminated a vicious dictator's rule. Failed policy? Not yet. Some were calling it a failed policy from the beginning. It was a quaqmire on the third week, I think. But we've had troops in Germany since WWII. They're still there. They're still in Korea too.
All these soldiers are helping keep peace in the world. So I believe we need to think beyond the price of gasoline and try looking at the big picture. Yeah, let's keep trying to invent beyond the automobile. I'll be the first to cheer new technology and new sources of energy and methods of energy efficiency and wise energy use.
But that's no reason why the people of Iraq cannot begin having stability in their broken country. It's not something that could happen over night. It's a long process. But whether we should or shouldn't have, we did. And now we -- the US -- have responsibilities to honor. So let's honor them.
I've never read so much crap. I served in Vietnam and have nothing but sympathy for those serving in Iraq. Most of these soldiers weren't even Regular Army, but reservists and National Guardsmen. This is the first time we've ever had forced repeat assignments to a war zone, even to the point of refusing to allow soldiers to exit the service on completion of their enlistment. Even WW2 service, which was for "the duration" people could look forward to an eventual end. Neocons like you just don't get it, or if you do you're deliberately evil.
The USA faces a problem since fewer men & women are reaching the age of 18. Since US Armed Forces need more people to occupy Iraq-they must lower their standards to get enough people to occupy Iraq. The US Forces must also replace dead people & people who are rendered unfit to serve by combat, accident, PTSD, etc. Some glibly speak of recruiting able bodied prisoners to form so called penal combat units (the prisoners would be freed if they fought well & survived combat) or forming a US Foreign Legion (which would give foreigners who served the USA well US citizenship).