Our own also suffer endlessly in endless U. S. wars
Editing, beginning and ending comments
by Carolyn Bennett
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ogether
with unspeakable horrors perpetrated on hundreds of thousands of peoples
whom U.S. plutocracy have invaded, displaced, slaughtered, terrorized across
the world – are the lies told and lies believed, and the unspeakable horrors perpetrated
upon America’s young.
The U.S.
Model: Use, Abuse, Discard
Multiple re-deployments into war zones exact “incalculable
mental and emotional costs on America's men and women in uniform and on their
families.” The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs reportedly has logged an estimate
of a military veteran suicide every 65 minutes. In 2012, the number of veteran
suicides was greater than U.S. soldiers killed in combat.
“One in 5 veterans of U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has
been diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.…” Three-quarters of
young male troops saw someone seriously injured or killed. More than half were
attacked or ambushed. Eighty-eight percent received incoming fire. In the minds
of these soldiers, the traumatic memories play and replay over and over [referenced:
U.S. Army Surgeon General Report, 2008]
Twenty-year-old Levi Derby, born May 13, 1981, in Cissna
Park, Illinois, joined the U.S. Army in 2001, and after six months was dropped
into the U.S. war on Afghanistan. As a veteran, the United States provided him no
health care coverage. After multiple deployments, the horrors of war, and
untreated trauma, Levi Derby ended his life.
“Inpatient mental health hospitalization” in the United
States reportedly averages around “$2,000” a day. A two to four-week stay costs
“$14,000” to “$30,000” – costs which most U.S. families cannot afford without government
coverage.
Levi Derby
in his mother’s words
On his return to the United States, U.S. veteran Derby had
become increasingly isolated. He was reportedly “not taking care of himself or
working and was having recurring nightmares about his experience at war.” One
day he and his family realized that he needed inpatient health treatment and
decided to take him to a hospital; but en route to the hospital, he reflected
on the high cost of treatment and his lack of health care coverage and asked
his grandmother who was taking him to return home. |
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is mother
was speaking in the Press TV documentary “The Battle Within.”
We send them back over and over and
over. No person can handle that. You see things in war that you can’t un-live. You can’t un-remember. It’s there with you forever; and to make them go back
multiple times is way too much. No human can handle that.
He came home and all he had was a
dead stare … like the walking dead. You could see anger in him
and a coldness; the happy son I had
known, who had loved life so much, loved children and animals now seemed like
this shell of a person.
He was not home long the first time before he was told he would be shipping off to Iraq. He could not bear
to go into war again. He had told me when he came home that he had killed and
he would never ever kill again.
When he came home they had
him on pills to sleep, pills to deal with the nightmares, pills for the anxiety
attacks.
He always had a prescription for Lorazepam for the anxiety attacks.
Then
the doctor that was treating him … said that his PTSD was so severe that he
couldn’t tell for certain that he also didn’t suffer from bipolar disorder; and
they started trying to treat him with medication for that; so many medications
they tried [and] he ended up having allergic reactions to them.
My son also
possibly had a traumatic brain injury that was never diagnosed. From the time
that he had come back until the time he died – sometimes blood would trickle
out of his ear and down his neck. After his death, when I took the sheets off his
bed, there were blood stains on the bed from his ears having bled while he was
sleeping.
This veteran’s mother said her son “had felt betrayed by our
government and his family and his friends” but “had he been given the proper
treatment, he could still be here today.” Instead this young man hanged himself
using “the same chain hoist that [his grandfather] had swung him on in a car
tire when he was a little boy.” The
soldier’s departing words:
‘I’m
sorry I could not take it anymore so it is time for me to go, to go to where
the sun is always sunny and the grass is always green and the flowers smell
like honey.’
Twenty-two veterans end their lives every day, the
documentary reported, and this is not even the full count. Considered in epidemic
proportions, U.S. veterans are killing themselves at rates that “more than
double” those of the civilian population. Between 2005 and 2011, an estimated “49,000”
U.S. veterans took their lives.
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t is not enough to
mourn our own or even to mourn the epidemic in soldier suicide.
It is time for
a new model to replace the U.S. model of use-abuse-discard. Time to try
nonviolence in domestic and international relations. Time to find other means of
meeting challenges and solving problems. Time to evolve from the barbarity of war
and war making. Time to stop the killing.
Sources and notes
“The Battle
Within,” Press TV documentary Synopsis: “Apart from memories, a
heartfelt suicide note is now the only keepsake a mother has of her son, the
son whom she lost to constant recurring nightmares of the atrocities he
witnessed in Afghanistan. His is by no means an isolated case. According to the
US Department of Veteran Affairs, every 65 minutes a military veteran commits
suicide. In 2012 more US soldiers killed themselves than died in combat.
Treatment for Iraq and Afghanistan vets suffering from PTSD has cost more than
2 billion dollars so far. Multiple redeployments into war zones have not only
had unprecedented financial costs for the US government but incalculable mental
and emotional costs on America’s men and women in uniform and their families, a
clear indication that the greatest casualties of war are seldom on the
battlefield.” September 21, 2014,
http://www.presstvdoc.com/Default/Detail/12891
http://www.presstvdoc.com/Default/Detail/12891
Wikipedia on Lorazepam
After its introduction in 1977, Lorazepam’s principal use
was in treating anxiety. Among benzodiazepines, Lorazepam has a relatively high
physical addiction potential and is recommended for short-term use, up to two
to four weeks, only. Long-term effects of benzodiazepines include tolerance,
dependence, a benzodiazepine withdrawal syndrome, and cognitive impairments
which may not completely reverse after cessation of treatment….Withdrawal
symptoms can range from anxiety and insomnia to seizures and psychosis.
Lorazepam is used for the short-term treatment of anxiety,
insomnia, acute seizures including status epilepticus [a life-threatening
condition in which the brain is in a state of persistent seizure], and sedation
of hospitalized patients, as well as sedation of aggressive patients. Adverse effects that may occur include
anterograde amnesia [loss of the ability to create new memories after the event
that caused the amnesia], depression, and paradoxical effects [the same ailments
the drug is supposed to cure] such as excitement or worsening of seizures. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorazepam
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A lifelong American writer and writer/activist (former academic and staffer with the U.S. government in Washington), Dr. Carolyn LaDelle Bennett is credentialed in education and print journalism and public affairs (PhD, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan; MA, The American University, Washington, DC). Her work concerns itself with news and current affairs, historical contexts, and ideas particularly related to acts and consequences of U.S. foreign relations, geopolitics, human rights, war and peace, and violence and nonviolence. Dr. Bennett is an internationalist and nonpartisan progressive personally concerned with society and the common good. An educator at heart, her career began with the U.S. Peace Corps, teaching in Sierra Leone, West Africa. Since then, she has authored several books and numerous current-affairs articles; her latest book: UNCONSCIONABLE: How The World Sees Us: World News, Alternative Views, Commentary on U.S. Foreign Relations; most thoughts, articles, edited work are posted at Bennett’s Study: http://todaysinsightnews.blogspot.com/ and on her Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/carolynladelle.bennett. http://www.prweb.com/releases/2014/08UNCONSCIONABLE/prweb12131656.htm http://bookstore.xlibris.com/Products/SKU-000757788/UNCONSCIONABLE.aspx Her books are also available at independent books in New York State: Lift Bridge in Brockport; Sundance in Geneseo; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center in Buffalo; Burlingham Books in Perry; The Bookworm in East Aurora
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