Politicians can shrug off the congressional Super Committee’s failure to agree on meaningful deficit reduction. To them, it’s just another budget gimmick that didn’t pan out. But for the U.S. military, the Super Committee …
Military Families
Thanksgiving: Something to Keep in Mind
Even though our troops are pretty well paid, a big family or a jobless spouse can spell trouble when it comes to putting food on the table. As the Washington Post notes this Thanksgiving morning on its front page:
Hundreds of financially strained military families in the Washington area are lining up for turkeys and free groceries
…
“What Can The Rest of Us Do to Help Prevent Military Suicides?”
Families and communities — the rest of us, in other words — can play a role in helping to cut down on the epidemic of military suicides. Dr. Elspeth “Cam” Ritchie, a Battleland contributor and former top Army psychiatrist, and Dr. Margaret Harrell, a military personnel expert at the Center for a New American Security — who …
“It’s A Family Business…”
As Dave Barno said two weeks ago in Time:
“It’s a tough time to be in the family business,” says Dave Barno, a retired Army lieutenant general who commanded all allied troops in Afghanistan in 2003–05 and has two sons in the Army. “As my kids deploy around the world, they’re running into their playmates from when they
…
“Does Fear of Getting Mental-Health Help Drive Up Suicide in the Military?”
The military has long known that many troops won’t take advantage of the roster of mental-health care options the military offers. That’s because they fear the stigma it might generate could hurt their career prospects. Does that aversion contribute to the military’s increased suicide rate? Dr. Margaret Harrell, a Center for a …
Photo Op: Welcome Home, Warthog Daddy!
Cutting through War Fatigue with the Power of Ink
TIME’s photo blog, LightBox, has published a stunning series of photographs of tattoos troops get to commemorate their experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan. That kind of body art is a little-noticed trend among the small percentage of Americans serving in the military.
In fact, TIME did it to help shine some light on the growing …
Community Service: Lending a Beautifying Hand to Caretakers of Wounded Soldiers
By Terri Pous
When soldiers are injured in combat, the healing doesn’t stop in the hospital. After they return home, the reality sets in. Whether they suffer physical injuries or the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), their caretakers and loved ones share their struggle.
A Thought for Veterans Day: Isolation Kills and Community Heals
By Joseph Bobrow
Founder and President, the Coming Home Project
Let me tell you a story from the book, Outliers: In the 1950’s a physician discovered a small town in eastern Pennsylvania where there was no heart disease under age 65, no suicide, alcoholism, drug addiction, peptic ulcers, and very little crime. People died …
TIME Veterans Day Twitter Chat–2:30 pm (1430) under #TIMEVets
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.
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 …
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 …
What Is Whereismypov.com?
It’s costly sending troops all over the world. Especially when a lot of them aren’t riding around in tanks or armored personnel carriers. In years past, the U.S. military has shipped about 75,000 cars to and from the U.S. every year for its troops’ personal use when they, and often their families, are deployed to non-war zones. …