I read something absolutely astonishing a couple of days ago. I know that military service can be a traumatic experience, especially if you are called up to go to war but this goes quite beyond the pale in Western society. But first let me say that this post is not about bashing US foreign policy so don't get your knickers in a twist, just look at the numbers.
In 2005, an average of 17 US military veterans committed suicide
every day! US vets are twice as likely to commit suicide as civilians, and in the 20-24 age bracket, they are
four times more likely than civilians to commit suicide.
More veterans commit suicide than are actually killed by the enemy in Iraq! I'm not sure I can even digest that fact properly. Or that, out of the number of homeless people in America, one in four of them are veterans.
If you really want to read more, there's the Times article on it here:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle2873622.ece
It's worth reading the comments too.
OK, there's some other facts which need mentioning. The article talks about veterans, but don't fall into the trap of thinking they mean Iraq war veterans, they mean
all veterans. So when I noted that 1 in 4 homeless people are veterans, less than 1% of those vets were involved in the current Iraq situation.
I say that because you can easily say "what an indictment of Iraq, Dubya, x, y and z" when the numbers show that it isn't actually much to do with that. So fight the temptation to rant, please.
Finally, I read something that weirded me even more. In Japan, the suicide rate averages out at one every fifteen minutes. Four an hour. About
ninety a day! WTF is going on over there?