This is a diary written by a former U.S. GI and American expat living in Germany, who is writing about US military and veteran suicide.
Did you know "The Army of One" used to be a recruiting slogan?
This is a sober diary about the state of these United States in the year 2014, where yet once again active duty military personnel are threatening through sobering statistics.........wherein more service members have committed suicide than were killed in combat and that more or less in America everyday about 22 veterans commit suicide. That is nearly one an hour, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week in a posture where death takes no holiday. Death never goes on strike. It simply soldier's on, taking our brothers and sisters. If we are human still, if we can shed a tear,(through stone cold eyes) if American society as yet has not filled you with a callous disregard for the value of human life, in where we regularly are socialized (as a final act of craven betrayal) to perfidiously step over homeless Americans, many of whom have served the nation honorably! Let me ask the hearts and unfeeling cold eyes made of stone, in the stillness of our own minds, why doesn't selfless sell in America?
Let us please understand this is historically a global problem, but nowhere in any other major industrialized country in the world is the problem as acute as it is in these United States, because we in America are the only major industrialized country on earth that doesn't have a universal medical access system as a human right that would care for everyone, veterans included.
THE RESCUE OF " AN ARMY OF ONE"!!
Watch an Amazing Timelapse Transformation of a Homeless Vet by the name of ..............................Jim Wolf United States Army Veteran.
Instead what we have is a grossly underfunded Veteran Administration's hospital system wherein too many veterans fall through the cracks. Concurrently we must also know that even large numbers of our active duty personnel find themselves ill served, wherein annually regularly more service members fall victim to suicide than are killed in combat. To that end, I invite you to watch the video below produced by the Dept of Defense which does not air on commercial television. Therefore it is unlikely you have ever seen this ad or others like in on this diary.
PLEASE NOTE: VIEWER DISCRETION IS ADVISED!
(Suicide prevention ad from the American Armed Forces Network)
(This commercial is unavailable on commercial American network television, it is made for broadcast on the Armed Forces television network AFN) Please remember by selflessly saving others, the life you save may be your own.
AMERICA WHERE OH WHERE DID YOU LOSE YOUR WAY!
One day I woke up in America and found my boyhood home that I'd been raised in, that I'd played baseball in, (with the boys of summer) and heard the crack of the bat, (smelt the hotdogs in the air), gone! It had just disappeared.It turned into a plutocracy with a callous disregard for human life.When I finally discovered I couldn't even go back to that great American boyhood pastime which is the county fair,(as the fairgrounds on occasion had been turned into an open air makeshift dental treatment center for the medically and dental indigent with medieval overtones reminiscent of a third world nation). I was faced with the stark reality that the America I had been raised in was gone! Ergo I took the decision to return to my ancestral home in Europe,(which like the rest of the E.U. humanely has universal medical access) because it became too painful to stay and watch what had happened to the country in which I love and was raised in. Where did it go, how did we get here? Don't we know that America is the only major industrialized nation in the world that doesn't offer its citizens universal access to medicine as a human right. Don't we know what happens to people when they can't get access to mental health care, particularly in a vastly under-funded Veteran's Administration healthcare system. Of course we know, we all know, everyone of us know and we're all too well mannered to talk about it, instead we allow too many of our brothers and sisters simply to slip away quietly as gentlemen and ladies in the night through suicide, because after all we are such a polite society, killing people with our craven kindness.
The thing about suicide is of course that it is a completely 100% preventable cause of death, and the best way to prevent it is to care enough about the victims to at least remember or record their names,(they aren't just numbers, who can be allowed to disappear into nothing, as if they never existed). We should erect a permanent memorial today in the nation's capital and around the country, with their names inscribed on it to memorialize them as we owe them a debt of grateful remembrance for their service to the nation, and let their families know they are not invisible, that we note with great sadness their passing, and that we are part of them, and they are part of us. That we are all together as one, part of the same whole in this place called America, which I had always thought was the last, best hope for the rights of humankind, while I grew up there.
In that the nation all of us care enough to speak out and more importantly listen, when people ask for help to reach out to people and their families in crisis, and to never, ever again allow our nation to be lied in to another Iraq style war that is going to drag us into the bushes, where we are fighting people who had nothing at all to do with 9/11 simply because the American government for the most part has been bought by the rich chicken hawk Wall Street war profiteers and their lobbyist and associates with private capital, primarily financial capital in a depoliticized America, that is increasingly becoming a completely atomized society. Nowhere is this problem worse than in the GOP and in the morally bankrupt so called Christian right, all whom are traitors of the American working class dream, along with some prominent collaborators from the Democratic party.
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What can we as the public do about this issue?
(When asked if he had any suggestions on dealing with this issue, Hal Donahue who is a veteran and blogger at the Huffington Post said on his Facebook page, quote: "one case at a time and keep the publicity on the issue...is all I can suggest" (end of quote)
He is absolutely right, we need to keep the attention on this issue. So to that end, I would like to please ENLIST your help in keeping the attention on this issue to with exigence share this article and ones like it on social media just as often as your time may permit, even to the point of cramping your fingers, so we can continue to draw the attention of the public to this important (lifesaving) issue, and keep it there permanently!!!
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(THE CURRENT MILITARY AND VETERAN SUICIDE RATE COMBINED AMOUNTS TO A TOTAL OF 23 MILITARY SUICIDES EVERYDAY IN AMERICA)
We are able to put a man on the moon, but we're not able to prevent military and veteran suicide in America in the year 2014? Simply put I don't buy it and neither should you because it's a damn lie. There are so many different studies out there that purport so many different things, that is why this diary relies on none of them, because their purpose is to create such a whirlwind of intentional statistical sophistry and confusion, so that the responsible parties are never fired, never disciplined, never held to account, and never miss a big bonus check. Everybody knows that until you start holding people and administrators accountable nothing changes. We have to have accountability. Harry Truman said the buck stops here! Are you listening President Obama, because if you are Sir please we need your help today. If you agree with this, then please call or write the White House today and ask President Obama to help us stop the absolutely 100% preventable tragedy of military and veteran suicide. Thank you.
Did you know that sexual assault in the US military has been identified as a factor in military suicide?
Huffington Post article "50 Facts About Sexual Assault in the US Military" (Nov. 15th 2013) "Military victims of violent assault or rape are 6 times more likely to attempt suicide than service members and veterans who have not experienced sexual assault and rape." Link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
The video below provides our readers with important information as to the stressors relating to suicide for military reservists, wherein finances were correctly identified as being a contributor of stress to military families. Perhaps if Congress would finally raise military pay to the point where food stores on military bases would no longer have to accept food stamps. This would take substantial stressors possibly leading to suicide, and pressure off military families.
(Please note: The Army Reserve and National Guard units have called up hundreds of thousands of Reservists to obviate the need for a draft from being instituted, because we know from our history of the Vietnam War instituting a draft will create vociferous, national protests that will shut down the war, whereas mobilizing Reserve and National Guard service members (from all branches) hasn't ever historically had the same effect. (Repeat deployments are a problem, that help well heeled traitors to the American cause avoid the responsibility of service). Of course the active duty force is also substantially over stressed with repeat deployments. May I please ask doesn't this lead to the perception that while the American military is at war, well heeled America is at the mall. Isn't it strangely unfair that we ask the very Americans who have the least to do the most for the country. As such hasn't this become a descriptor of the very craven darkness that has started to surround the very soul of American well heeled society, who literally stridently step over the veterans with callous disregard, in what must be seen as a perfidious, final indeed craven act of betrayal by the well heeled traitors to the working class cause of all Americans.
Now, how big of a problem is military suicide in America, really? Well the truth is really nobody knows for sure. As is demonstrated in the Reuters piece this diary linked to earlier, the status of military suicide as reported on death certificates is only published in 21 STATES. What this means is that government statistics on this issue are incomplete and therefore most likely have to be viewed as a clear attempt to whitewash the government's failure in its management of military and veteran suicide in America which must be seen as a failure to hold senior administrators reasonably accountable.
Therefore, please do not be misled by statistics which sole intent is to confuse with inconclusive sophistry, and downplay this completely preventable American tragedy. What we do know for sure from the statistics we have is that we have about 23 combined military and veteran suicides in every 24 hour period. Doubtlessly that is too much. If the other 29 States reported military and veteran suicide statistics, that number would only get bigger, as if this preventable tragedy wasn't big enough already.
The civilians in our society must be educated to understand that it isn't just those who are in combat but the stressors of non-combat military life in general are such that it must be identified plainly as an additional driver of military suicide. The simple truth is that most of these people would be alive today if it weren't for their military service.
Reuters February 1st 2013
"The VA did not provide raw data and acknowledged its national figures were still estimates. The new study was based on data collected from 21 states in which military status is reported on the death certificate. It said more data from more states were being processed." http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
Here is a link to a suicide prevention lifeline for anyone military, vet or just a plain good old American civilian. Please help anyone who you see may need help.
http://www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org/
Remember by selflessly saving others, the life you save may be your own. Please remember you are never alone! There is always hope :-) Can you imagine the indescribable pain and the deep, hollow, heartfelt sadness felt by a parent who has raised a child from a little baby and who has lost that child be it in combat or through military suicide. If we do not stand in solidarity with the families of our fallen brothers and sisters, it will diminish us all, in this place called America as the last, best hope for humankind will be
gone!(To future historians this diary is about the struggle for survival in America in the year 2014. The purpose of this diary is to afflict the well heeled and comfortable, and to comfort the afflicted, because that's the only way America's needless tragedy will ever change, for both civilian and military/veteran suicides). So you see this is about more than just
the death of an army of one!.......
Let me end on this positive note, if we will stand together we will win!! Military suicide is an enemy we must all face together! Please join us in spreading the word on all social media! (End of diary).
WHY ANYONE WOULD TROLL A SUICIDE PREVENTION DIARY BEGGARS BELIEF!
Please support and share this suicide prevention diary and ones like it on all social media to help us curtail the totally preventable tragic suicide rate in America, both for civilian and military suicides. Finally please don't listen to Internet trolls. We cannot be allowed to reduce suicide victims in America and their bereaving families to mere statistics, so as rob them of their humanity, in a clear attempt to whitewash this completely preventable human tragedy.
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