The 6,000 Walking Time Bombs

News&Views
The Armchair Curmudgeon
March 21, 2007



60,000 GI’s are Walking Time Bombs…

Americans are being lulled with watered down reports of wounded coming out of Iraq and Afghanistan that doesn’t begin to describe the full challenges that face both our military and our society. .

. While figures are separated by branch of the service and whether an injury was accidentally sustained or occurred in the “line of duty,” the fact remains that the figures do not reflect a whole category of walking wounded who are either not diagnosed or considered fit for service. This category of wounded are those who suffer some sort of mental disability ranging from depression to feelings of suicide.

Among those who have been diagnosed, the terminology most used to describe their condition is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder; many who have been diagnosed with this condition, spend a day or two in counseling are considered cured and fit for service where, in actuality, they are walking time bombs ready to go off at any time.

Why hasn’t this condition, which had been previously referred to as battle fatigue, or being “shell shocked,” (WWI), been recognized and treated more aggressively by physicians and psychologists? Part of the reason has to do with the GI, themselves, who feel that by so doing that they would be an admission that they are less the man or that they have let down their fellow troopers.

The military, for all intents and purposes, remains a very macho establishment where those seeking aid for their condition may be ridiculed and criticized by their fellow men, sergeants and officers.

In discussions, many feel that an admission that they need help will affect their military records and advancement in their own units. Moreover, many so afflicted also feel guilty for their feelings resulting in additional internal conflicts that often cause one so affected to keep the problem to himself.

Many of these who have either been diagnosed or not but are still affected with the symptoms of PTSD will find themselves back on the front lines in eleven months after perhaps having already fulfilled one or two tours in Iraq.

According to independent studies, one out of six troops in Iraq return home suffer from
PTSD. If more than one million men and women have served to date in Iraq and Afghanistan, that translates into 60,000 cases of this form of psychological “wounding.”

Our failure to admit that many of our young troops may be suffering various forms of PTSD from depression to possible suicidal tendencies poses a danger to not only those they serve with but to their families and friends as well; moreover, it is an admission that the US military is unwilling to face the truth and deal with it in a forthright manner. This failing, as in other wars, will not simply go away but manifest deeper societal problems that will haunt American families far into the future and pose a cost that many are simply not prepared to acknowledge or prepare for as we hobble along in a dishonest war provoked by stubborn government bereft of critical thinking skills and caught up in their own agenda.

Les Aaron
The Armchair Curmudgeon
www.lesaaron.blogspot.com