The disasters over the last three months — including American troops urinating on Afghan corpses, burning Qurans, and the massacre of Afghan civilians, including women and children, by at least one American soldier — have …
Military Mental Health
Dear John Letter 2.0
David Wood has done some of the finest reporting on the wounds of war, both seen and unseen. His latest lays bare the serious genital wounding of hundreds of U.S. troops that’s rarely acknowledged:
“Who’s going to want to be with me now?” wondered Marine Staff Sgt. Glen Silva, 39, after an IED blast shattered his leg, ripped open his
…
Veteran #11-03021-133
The Army veteran of combat in both Afghanistan and Iraq wasn’t named in a recent Department of Veterans Affairs’ inspector general’s investigation. So we’ll just refer to him by the IG report’s number. Plainly, he had a family who cared about him, and VA personnel who sometimes did their best – and sometimes …
Is The Army Responsible for the Afghan Massacre?
Colleague Jim Frederick is asking some tough questions over at the Time Ideas blog:
American and Afghan authorities are scrambling to ensure this tragedy does not derail the planned departure of NATO forces in 2014, and it is
…
The Afghan Massacre
A 38-year old U.S. Army staff sergeant allegedly left his forward operating base, by himself, in southern Afghanistan near Kandahar early Sunday. He reportedly knocked on several doors and entered at least two houses, where he …
Battlefield Stress Could Have Triggered Afghan Massacre
The homeland of the Taliban, where Sunday’s apparent civilian massacre took place, is a “pressure cooker” for U.S. troops assigned there. Their nearly daily contact with bloodshed could push an unstable soldier to lash out by …
When is it War?
If you were in Iraq in 2008, just after the wave of troops for the troop surge had crested with 160,000 or so American troops in country, you might have had a pretty good reason to think you were involved in a war. …
A Two-War Hangover
The Pentagon brass are trekking to Capitol Hill this week to detail how they’re trimming their budgets now that all U.S. troops are out of Iraq, and have begun coming home from Afghanistan. But it’s important to remember that wars’ costs last far longer than wars’ duration.
Here’s a new chart from the Department of …
A Daughter’s Plea: “Daddy, Please Don’t Leave…”
The other day I was sitting in my office when my 3-year-old daughter came running in. She was sobbing, unable to catch her breath or tell me what was wrong. Her face flush, with red circles emanating from her swollen eyes, she was inconsolable. In tow came my wife, somber-faced and also on the verge of tears. “What’s wrong?” …
Thanks, General Chiarelli
Tuesday marks the final day in uniform for General Pete Chiarelli, the Army’s vice chief of staff. As the service’s No.2 officer, he has been the key driver on fighting to reduce the mental toll of the nation’s wars on its …
Tick, Tick, Tick: Another Absurd Headline
I wrote recently about the press reporting on veteran-committed crimes as a trend of veteran/psychopaths returned from the war. CNN and the Christian Science Monitor were guilty last week. Now it’s USA Today’s turn. According to the bonehead editor who came up with this sensationalist headline, returned veterans are ticking …
Homeless Female Vets on the Rise
The Department of Veterans Affairs has made stamping out homelessness among the nation’s veterans a top priority. According to this new Government Accountability Office report, it has its work cut out for it (despite some recent good news). “Limited VA data show that the number of women veterans the agency identified as homeless …
State of the Union: How the Vets Scored It
When President Obama took to the podium to deliver the State of the Union address, Paul Rieckhoff, the founder and executive director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America was in the gallery. While he enjoyed the pageantry …