Democracy Now!, June 2012

Every week, I do the In Memoriam segment to make sure that for the families of service members reading C&L and those in service know that we have not forgotten about their sacrifices. Each week, I look up those names and find Facebook pages and obituary pages filled with grief and loss. Some of the news reports I find openly state that the cause of death is suicide. Most times, they simply say that the cause of death is "under investigation", but if you dig further, it becomes clear that the death was a suicide. What we and the Pentagon need to own is that after twelve years in Afghanistan and multiple tours of duty for most of the troops stationed there, far too many suicides are occuring.

More soldiers took their own lives than died in combat during 2012, new Department of Defense figures show. The Army's suicide rate has climbed by 9 percent since the military branch launched its suicide-prevention campaign in 2009.

Through November, 177 active-duty soldiers had committed suicide compared to 165 during all of 2011 and 156 in 2010. In all of 2012, 176 soldiers were killed in action -- all while serving in Operation Enduring Freedom, according to DOD.Army suicides have increased by at least 54 percent since 2007 when there were 115 — a number the Washington Post then called "an all-time record."

This is an abomination on every level. While pundits and politicos talk about "shared sacrifice" we are using up these troops with three, four, five tours of duty, foreclosing on their homes stateside, ignore them as they transition to private life and now talk about cutting back on their benefits as part of our "fiscal responsibility".

Each Sunday, I write those names of the casualties and I think of the kids who no longer have that parent for all the important milestones to come. The spouses who have lost a partner and mate. The parents who will bury their child. And it breaks my heart to know how many of them saw no other way out than to take their own life.

This is why I'm so deeply cynical about the so-called "patriotism" of certain politicians. You would think at the very least, taking care of the troops when they come home would be first on their list -- but instead, they talk about tax cuts.

It seems like the system is so overwhelmed by the number of veterans in need of psychological services, all they do is treat the symptoms with drug cocktails -- which becomes even more dangerous when veterans go to several different doctors, like this Afghan war vet.

CALLAWAY, Fla. — Libby Busbee pounded on the window of her son’s maroon Dodge Charger as he sat in the driveway of their home earlier this year. Locked inside his car, Army Spc. William Busbee sat with a .45-caliber gun pointed to the side of his head.

“Look at me,” his mother cried out as she tried to get her son’s attention. “Look at me.”

He wouldn’t look.

He stared out the front windshield, distant, said Libby Busbee, relating the story from an apartment complex in Callaway.

“I kept yelling, ‘Don’t you do this. Don’t do it.’ He wouldn’t turn his head to look at me,” she said, looking down at the burning cigarette in her hand.

A 911 call was made. The police pulled her away from the car.

William, Libby Busbee’s 23-year-old son, was talking with a police officer when he fired a shot through the front windshield of his car, according to the police report.

The police recoiled. William rapped on the window in apparent frustration, the report indicated.

Then the second shot was heard.

“I knew that was the one,” said Libby Busbee.

William Busbee took his life in March with his mother and sisters looking on.

William Busbee was no casualty of the war in Afghanistan. He was a casualty of his own mind, his mother said.

Libby Busbee bowed her head, talking as she sat next to a bird-of-paradise on the front porch of her apartment. She could no longer live in the home on 12th Street.

“They wouldn’t let me talk to him,” she said, referring to the day her son shot himself. “I know if he was able to see me he wouldn’t have done it.”

According to a Veterans Affairs report this spring, a veteran commits suicide every 80 minutes. More than 6,500 suicides have occurred since the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan began. For every service member who dies in battle, 25 veterans die by their own hands.

According to a Pentagon report, more American active service members have killed themselves in the first six months of 2012 than in the first six months of any of the previous 11 years, The Associated Press reported.

The report reveals 154 service members killed themselves in the first 155 days of 2012 alone. The number of deaths by suicide is 50 percent higher than combat deaths in Afghanistan during the same period and an 18 percent increase over active service member suicides in the first six months of 2011.

And, while only 1 percent of Americans have served in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, veterans of these conflicts represent 20 percent of all suicides in the United States, the VA reported.

Libby Busbee said when her son returned home, he didn’t leave the war behind.

“He saw horrible things — his friends dying,” she said. “The people over there were constantly attacking them. He even said the kids would be with them when they attacked.”

William Busbee was in the Army Special Forces, airborne and the Army Rangers.

“He told me how he picked up the body parts and loaded them onto a helicopter so their families would have something to bury,” she said.

She said her son had tried to commit suicide in Pesh Valley of Afghanistan. “He told me, ‘Momma, the William you knew died over there,’ ” she said.

On his return home, “He couldn’t be in the dark — at all. He’d flip out in the dark,” she said. “He was sleepwalking and they gave him 400 milligrams of Seroquel, they gave him Paxil, Klonopins. They had him on a lot of stuff. I don’t think he knew which way to go.

Henry Rollins on military suicides.

Isn't this a little... sad? I mean, veterans have so much working against them. Hell, counselors aren't even allowed to ask the veterans they counsel if they have guns (because the NRA doesn't approve). They have trouble getting jobs, many of them lost their homes while they were in the Middle East, a lot of them have PTSD and the military suicides now outnumber those killed in action.

Maybe keeping people in an insane war has something to do with it, too. Because if you recognize the insanity, and you can't leave, suicide might seem like a reasonable option.

And smoothies are going to help? Maybe if we stop sending people off for extended tours in insane wars, they wouldn't have so many problems:

The military might have a new weapon in its battle against suicide: smoothies, spiked with omega-3 fatty acids.

The Associated Press reports the study, being conducted by the Veterans Administration, Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC), and the National Institutes of Health, on behalf of the Army, will build on previous research that proved people with low omega-3 levels face more mental disorders.

Nearly 350 servicemembers have already taken their own lives this year, a number the VA says is almost double the civilian population.

Some veterans already receiving mental health care will get smoothies high in omega-3s, while others will receive placebos. If the effect proves to be strong enough, the military may consider giving all soldiers supplements of the fatty acids to ward off depression.

Don't get me wrong, I know that omega 2 fatty acids are quite helpful for a host of psychological problems. It just seems a little superfluous next to the other problems.

I asked a reporter at Unnamed Major Metropolitan Newspaper, why they don’t cover suicides. Why is it that traditionally in the press there's a veil of silence draped over taking your own life? He said it’s because they don’t want to encourage the behavior. The concern is if they report on it; others will copy. There’s no such apprehension when it comes to covering homicides, but I digress. “Plus there are far more suicides than murders and we don’t cover every murder,” is how another crime reporter put it.

But then there are notable suicides which involve famous people. Enter Jamey Rodemeyer: a 14-year-old boy from Buffalo, New York, who was tormented at school for being gay. Jamey made a video for the “It Gets Better Project” professing his love and admiration for Lady Gaga. A couple of months after posting the clip, the bullying apparently became intolerable and he committed suicide. Now Lady Gaga is tweeting about how she plans to lobby the President to elevate bullying to the level of a hate crime.

According to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, suicide is the third leading cause of death among those 15-24 years old, compared to 11th in the general population. The teenage suicide rate is 6 per 100,000, nearly half of the general population’s at 11 per 100,000. It means that of the total number of suicides in this country, few of them are teenagers, but among deaths of teenagers, suicide is one of the leading causes.

Every day around 100 Americans kill themselves. Every day.

Jamey’s death was not a statistical anomaly, we just have a media which doesn’t report suicides if they can avoid it. But when Lady Gaga tweets about it to her 14 million followers, they can no longer avoid it. Jamey’s YouTube videos only add to the haunting nature of his story.

When you watch at Jamey’s videos and hear his promise to others that it "gets better" – one is too many. It feels like an injustice. And because Jamey’s plight hurts, we all want to DO something.

I don’t know how to eradicate bullying. I don’t know if we need more people in jail in this country, especially teenagers like those who bullied Jamey. I don’t know how to make kids nicer to each other. I don’t know how to make being a teenager less painful.

I do know that suicide needs to be taken out of the closet. The idea that if we talk about suicide – if we read about it in the paper – it’ll be so tempting more people will kill themselves is ridiculous. It reeks of superstition. Censoring stories doesn’t save lives.

Eighteen U.S. military veterans a day kill themselves. It’s a kind of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell that’s still being implemented. Over 6,500 vets a year die this way. That’s more soldiers dying at home in one year than in 10 years in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. And among those currently serving, in 2010 suicide took more lives of our military personnel than battle. The problem is so prevalent Obama is the first President in history to send letters of condolences to military families of troops who committed suicide.

Suicides for Native American males ages 10-24 are almost three times the national average. Also, Alaska has the most suicides per capita. In case you think it’s from lack of sunlight, New Mexico ranks number two. The vast majority of suicides are gun deaths.

The statistics on suicide are not done in real time; they’re not like opinion polls. The rate was steadily decreasing in the U.S. from the 1950s to 2007. But then, the world melted. Studies link higher rates of suicides to economic downturns. During the Great Depression, the rate spiked at 18.9 per 100,000 nationally (which is actually low for Alaska today). The iconic image of the stock market crash was of people jumping out of windows.

So we can guess that our national suicide rate is probably on the rise, across the board, along with the rising unemployment and a flailing economy. We just aren’t reading the individual episodes in newspapers…unless Lady Gaga mentions them. Suicide is still stigmatized.

And since we’re highlighting an issue – here’s one of the causes: cut backs. As states are slashing their budgets, social services and mental health resources (including the VA) are disappearing. The number one cause of all suicides is mental illness and services to treat it are on the chopping block.

A falling tide sinks all ships.

A bad economy adversely affects our birth rate, health, increases in homelessness, domestic abuse, substance abuse and of course, suicide.

It’s the economy…stupid.

Cross posted at TinaDupuy.com

Every week, I list the names of the service members killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. My grandfather was a high-ranking officer in the Air Force. Whether or not you agree with their mission, I consider it honoring my grandfather's dedication to the military to treat the sacrifices made by these service members and their families with the respect they deserve.

But for as much as I view my In Memoriam posts as an obligation to never forget the ultimate sacrifice these men and women made--and the holes they left in their surviving families' lives--I know that I only am giving the tip of the iceberg. I can't account for the deaths of Afghans, as heartlessly, no one has started a count of that, unlike Iraq Body Count. And to my knowledge, suicides among service people are not counted in the official casualty count. Many occur on leave or after active duty, which make their accounting difficult at best. But make no mistake, it's happening and on a more frequent basis the longer these occupations drag on.

Struggling with sharp increases in suicides among U.S. military forces, the Pentagon is joining a new national effort to reduce the number of Americans who take their own lives.[..]

More than 1,100 members of the armed forces killed themselves from 2005 to 2009, and suicides have been rising again this year.

Artist Sebastian Errazuriz hasn't forgotten those service members. On the outside of his Brooklyn studio, Errazuriz has been marking the suicides of the service members, as compared to the official casualty count.

'American Kills' by Chilean-born New York based artist Sebastian Errazuriz is a public installation showcasing the suicide rates of US soldiers. After searching on official war sites on the internet, he accidentally found out that 2 times more American soldiers had died in 2009 by committing suicide than those killed during that same year in the war in Iraq; an alarming comparison that Errazuriz had personally never read or heard about before.

"When I first found the overall statistics summed the 304 suicides by US soldiers during 2009, I was shocked. I tried to find a number to compare that statistic. To my surprise, the suicide statistic doubled the total of 149 US soldiers that had died in the Iraq War during 2009 and equaled the number of soldiers killed in Afghanistan."

Errazuriz's first instinct was to post the statistic on Facebook, dumbfounded by the lack of response and interest, he bought can of black paint and decided to 'post' the news in the real world on his own wall outside his studio in Brooklyn. Equipped with a ladder, he marked a black strip for every dead soldier, until both the suicide rates and war rates occupied the entire wall and were registered as a single image. (Text edited for clarity-NB)

It's a sobering reminder that there are far more casualties to this "war" than just what the media tells us. If you know of a military person in need of help, please refer them to the VA's Suicide Prevention Hotline (courtesy of IAVA)

The Department of Veterans Affairs' (VA) Veterans Health Administration (VHA) has founded a national suicide prevention hotline to ensure veterans in emotional crisis have free, 24/7 access to trained counselors.

If you need help now, please dial 1-800-273-TALK (8255) and press "1" to be routed to a professional counselor at a VA call center.

One of the reasons I thought this war (in addition to being immoral) was so very stupid is that I remember the veterans from the Vietnam era - how many of them were a mess when they came home, and how many stayed that way. The power to send soldiers to war is a sacred trust, and it should not be used for anything less than the most compelling reasons.

As bad as it is for soldiers, recruiters have a uniquely stressful job in which they're expected to somehow turn their own war experiences into happy talk for potential converts:

Morning Edition, January 2, 2009 · The Army is investigating a cluster of suicides in the Houston Recruiting Battalion, where five soldiers have taken their own lives since 2001. Nationally, 17 recruiters have committed suicide during the same period.

Back in March of 2007, Aron Andersson locked himself in the cab of his Ford 150 pickup, called home to say he was going to kill himself, shot up the dashboard radio, and then put a bullet in his head. He had threatened suicide five months earlier, and back then his father, Bob Andersson, reported him to the military.

"I don't know if that was the right thing to do, but I called a major and told him his girlfriend had said he threatened to commit suicide, and she told me he was going through night terrors and a bunch of other things. And he'd get up to go to work in the morning and tell his girlfriend he was exhausted, and she'd say, 'Yeah you've been jumpin' over the couch, hidin' behind the chairs and stuff, like you're in battle,' and he wouldn't even realize it in the morning," Andersson says.

Aron Andersson served two tours in Iraq, and he was furious with his father for reporting him, saying his Army career would be ended.

"And I just simply told him, 'Well, Aron, if you don't talk to me ever again, I can live with that. But if I didn't turn you in and something happened, I don't think I could live with that,' " Bob Andersson says.

Andersson says his son had trouble delivering the required two recruits a month, especially after his experience in Iraq.

"How could you be over there and see some of the things he saw and dealt with, and try to hire people to go over there and do that?" he says.

With the NRA, the principle of blocking any attempts to document or control gun ownership is always much more important than actual human lives - even if they're the lives of our war veterans. Let that sink in, because this might be the single most cynical thing they've done yet:

Of all of the lobbying organizations that feed off fear, and rely for their funding and power on dividing Americans, one of the worst is the National Rifle Association.

The NRA never misses a chance to misrepresent the positions of people who advocate reasonable gun control, to make Americans afraid that the government wants to take away their right to defend their homes and their loved ones, and to turn any attempt to have a sensible conversation about guns into an assault on the Second Amendment.

Why else would the NRA support a law that makes it more difficult to prevent suicides among members of the armed forces?

Let me explain. According to a report on the website Congress.org, more American troops killed themselves in 2010 than died in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. Nearly half of those suicides involved personally owned weapons.

So it makes sense for military counselors to talk to at-risk active-duty soldiers about owning a gun. No, that’s against the law. A rule in last year’s National Defense Authorization Act — backed by the NRA of course — prohibits such conversations. The NRA was outraged, apparently, that a Kansas army base wanted soldiers to register privately owned weapons. Oh the horror! Next thing you know they’ll just take rifles away from combat soldiers and replace them with ACLU cards.

A new report, which you can read about on Think Progress, recommends that Congress repeal the provision. But I doubt many members of Congress have the courage to stand up to the NRA on this. In fact, the NRA is trying to make the situation even worse. It worked with Senator Jim Inhofe, the Oklahoma Republican, to add language to the military spending bill that would prohibit the Defense Department from “issuing any requirement, or collecting or recording any information” relating to legal gun ownership.

Of course. Because, as Andrew Rosenthal points out, anything approaching a reasonable compromise will put NRA lobbyists out of work, and who wants to give up that cushy gig?

This post is written as part of the Media Matters Gun Facts fellowship. The purpose of the fellowship is to further Media Matters’ mission to comprehensively monitor, analyze, and correct conservative misinformation in the U.S. media. Some of the worst misinformation occurs around the issue of guns, gun violence, and extremism, the fellowship program is designed to fight this misinformation with facts.