Hagel: 'Troops At a Breaking Point'; Vets: 'Then Bring Us Home'

[damnedifIknow]

Hagel highlights mental health epidemic in military but says solution is more 'deployment readiness.' Vets say end trauma by ending the wars."

US soldiers "are at their breaking point," declared Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel on Monday, citing the impact of multiple deployments over more than a decade of continuous US war beginning in 2001.

Though some veterans welcome the acknowledgement, they disagree with Hagel's "solution"—focused on beefing up the military—insisting that this problem can only be addressed by ending the wars responsible for this trauma.

Speaking at the Veterans of Foreign Wars annual conference in Louisville on Monday, Hagel shared the stories of service members who have faced five or more consecutive deployments that compound their mental traumas and make them freeze up in battle. "When you push human beings this hard, they break," he stated."

* Veterans and service members have been arguing for years that the real solution to the mental health epidemic plaguing the military is to end US-led wars.

"We have been saying troops are at their breaking point for a long time," said Matt Howard, Iraq Veteran with the Marine Corps and staffer with Iraq Veterans Against the War.

"Building up the military to get folks ready to go to the next conflict is a flawed logic," he continued. "The solution is we give troops the mental and medical healthcare [they] need. The solution is we stop deploying people."

"If they want to rehabilitate troops, they can pull them out of Afghanistan and stop putting us in a position where folks are deploying multiple times and not getting the mental and physical healthcare they need," declared Howard."

https://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/07/23-10

[bigwillq]

1. Bring them home, NOW!

Hagel is awful.

[KG]

2. piss on chuck hagel.

[newfie11]

3. Agreed

[matthews]

7. He's worthless as the proverbial t*ts on a boar. I live in Nebraska.

I know that SOBs voting record when he was in the Senate (a win as miraculous as bush's and brought to you by the same company. His.)

He even voted to deny poor children access to healthcare"

Voted NO on adding 2 to 4 million children to SCHIP eligibility.
Allows State Children's Health Insurance Programs (SCHIP), that require state legislation to meet additional requirements imposed by this Act, additional time to make required plan changes. Pres. Bush vetoed this bill on Dec. 12, 2007, as well as a version (HR976) from Feb. 2007.
http://www.ontheissues.org/Social/Chuck_Hagel_Health_Care.htm

Look at Chuckles voting record. It's appalling. And for someone like this guy to end up in a Democrat's administration is a sin.

http://www.ontheissues.org/senate/chuck_hagel.htm


But since Penny Pritzger got the nomination for Commerce Secretary, nothing can surprise me anymore.

[HereSince1628]

4. If we REALLY loved veterans...We wouldn't make any more

and we'd make sure to take care of the ones we have.

It's really not a problem to be solved by dilution or selective weeding.

[southernyankeebelle]

5. Don't be pissed at Hagel he hasn't been on the job long. He'll get them out sooner then

you think.

[HereSince1628]

8. Hagel's been around it plenty long enough to know the military solution to a military problem

is always MORE MILITARY.

[MrSlayer]

6. No no no… you volunteered… you have to go to Syria.

Stop loss, so what?

You signed up, suck it up.


For people that pretend to love the troops so much we sure treat them like shit.

It's fucked up.

[nadinbrzezinski]

9. If we want to continue the wars

the other solution will never be touched with a ten foot pole and it should... (that way the American people will pay MORE attention.)

[TwilightGardener]

10. Hagel can't end anything on his own. But I don't doubt he would advise the President

to end Afghanistan sooner rather than later (he publicly disagreed with Obama's surge/escalation policy), and to stay out of Syria as much as possible. The article makes him sound like McCain Junior, which has not been the case.