In honor of Veterans Day, we will be holding a special Twitter discussion about the disconnect between the U.S. military, veterans returning home from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the rest of American society under the hashtag #TIMEVets.
Military
Oh, The (War) Stories You’ll Hear
By Alex Horton, Official VA Blogger
Rain had transformed Baghdad’s many unpaved roads into one giant muddy sinkhole, and the engine of a Stryker vehicle moaned in a failed effort to escape. The vehicle sunk under the weight of its armor and required a tow. The driver and vehicle commander leapt to the ground to attach towing …
Military Alcohol Use, Chapter 2
We noted Monday that alcoholism has become an increasing problem for the U.S. military. Want proof (no pun intended): check out this story from California’s North County Times, which does a good job covering what’s happening at the Marine Corps’ nearby Camp Pendleton:
A Marine found dead in his barracks room at Camp Pendleton
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An Army Apart: The Widening Military-Civilian Gap
The U.S. military and American society are drifting apart. It’s tough inside the civilian world to discern the drift. But troops in all the military services sense it, smell it — and talk about it. So do their superiors. We have a professional military of volunteers that has been stoically at war for more than a decade. But as the …
Military Suicide: A Former Army Psychiatrist’s Veterans Day Reflections
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The rates of suicide in the United States Army began to rise in 2004, and continued climbing until 2010. Then the suicide rate in the active duty finally started to level off, but continues to rise in National Guard soldiers. It remains twice as high as it was prior to the wars in …
Carrier Truman C.O. Passes Away…
This isn’t the way a Navy aviator is supposed to leave his vessel, especially when it’s a behemoth like the 100,000-ton USS Harry S Truman. But on Tuesday morning, about 10 a.m., Captain Tushar Tembe collapsed as he was leaving the ship he had commanded for the past three months as it was undergoing maintenance in Norfolk. He died …
A Scary New Way of Looking at Military Suicides – In the Mirror
Two Air Force researchers are suggesting it’s not the soldiers who kill themselves who should shoulder all the blame for their deaths. We – all of us, society writ large – may also be responsible.
“There appear to be systemic factors that play an important role in the rise in military suicides,” says George Mastroianni, …
Thanks, Vets
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Friday is Veterans Day, and, like clockwork, the Pentagon has rolled out a 75-second video of new Defense Secretary Leon Panetta – an Army vet himself — thanking all who have served. Do these celluloid Hallmarks mean anything? Most troops I speak with never see them; this one had …
“Do Frequent Military Deployments Increase Suicide?”
The military has been seeking the causes of a spike in military suicides for the last several years so it can begin knocking it down. New evidence just coming to light makes clear that the frequency of military deployments may play a role. John Nagl, of the Center for a New American Security, and I discuss this persistent challenge …
War Graffiti Coming Home
Combat is often seconds of terror surrounded by months of boredom. So troops play video games, visit the gym – and paint graffiti. OK. So it’s not what we think of when we think of graffiti. It’s more informational graphics, depicting unit insignias and other stuff that helps weld units together. The U.S. military is currently …
Family Lies
The nation is always expressing gratitude and thanks for all that military families do (did you know we’re in the middle of Military Family Appreciation Month?). In typical bureaucratic fashion, Congress ordered the Defense Department to certify that appreciation by creating a Family Readiness Council, designed to let the brass …
Hurt. Twice.
Only one in three military veterans wounded in Afghanistan and Iraq wars says he or she is getting the help they believe they need from the federal government. That’s the grim bottom line in a new report out Tuesday from the Pew Research Center:
Veterans badly hurt in the post-9/11 era also are more likely than other veterans,
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Deskboundaries
TIME has just posted photographs of some of Washington’s most famous desks, past and present. This one caught our eye: it’s the desk of Adm. Mike Mullen, when was serving as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “The USELESS stamp was all in fun…mostly,” says Navy Capt. John Kirby, Mullen’s long-time spokesman. “He wanted it …