Newsweek: "Anything Not to Go Back" (rising self-harm trend among soldiers to avoid multiple tours)

[Amerigo Vespucci]

As an internist at New York's Mount Sinai Hospital, Dr. Stephanie Santos is used to finding odd things in people's stomachs. So last spring when a young man, identifying himself as an Iraq-bound soldier, said he had accidentally swallowed a pen at the bus station, she believed him. That is, until she found a second pen. It read 1-800-GREYHOUND. Last summer, according to published reports, a 20-year-old Bronx soldier paid a hit man $500 to shoot him in the knee on the day he was scheduled to return to Iraq. The year before that, a 24-year-old specialist from Washington state escaped a second tour of duty, according to his sister, by strapping on a backpack full of tools and leaping off the roof of his house, injuring his spine.

Such cases of self-harm are a "rising trend" that military doctors are watching closely, says Col. Kathy Platoni, an Army Reserve psychologist who has worked with veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan. "There are some soldiers who will do almost anything not to go back," she says. Col. Elspeth Ritchie, the Army's top psychologist, agrees that we could see an uptick in intentional injuries as more U.S. soldiers serve long, repeated combat tours, "but we just don't have good, hard data on it." Intentional- injury cases are hard to identify, and even harder to prosecute. Fewer than 21 soldiers have been punitively discharged for self-harm since 2003, according to the military. What's worrying, however, is that American troops committed suicide at the highest rate on record in 2007—and the factors behind self-injury are similar: combat stress and strained relationships. "It's often the families that don't want soldiers to return to war," says Ritchie.

Soldiers have long used self-harm as a rip cord to avoid war. During World War I, The American Journal of Psychiatry reported "epidemics of self-inflicted injuries," hospital wards filled with men shot in a single finger or toe, as well as cases of pulled-out teeth, punctured eardrums and slashed Achilles' heels. Few doubt that the Korean and Vietnam wars were any different. But the current war—fought with an overtaxed volunteer Army—may be the worst. "We're definitely concerned," says Ritchie. "We hope they'll talk to us rather than self-harm."

http://www.newsweek.com/id/140478

[babylonsister]

1. Rec'd. I have no other words, only rage that it's come to this. nt

[patrice]

2. They know this War is WRONG and they don't want to be a part of it anymore.

God Bless Them.

[nashville_brook]

4. it's a meat-grinder -- better to lose a kneecap than your life/family/etc in Bush's Big Adventure

[patrice]

5. Or they'd rather hurt themselves than continue to

Hurt people who don't deserve it: http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/06/04/9407/#comment-293230

[Amerigo Vespucci]

6. For me, this is still the single most haunting image from the war to date:

Mays, a young Iraqi Shi'ite girl, cries after a mortar shell which landed outside her home in Najaf injured her uncle August 18, 2004. Explosions and sniper fire echoed from around holy sites in Najaf on Thursday, raising doubts that a radical Shi'ite cleric would end a bloody uprising and leave his sanctuary in a sacred shrine. REUTERS/Ali Jasim

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0819-02.htm

[patrice]

10. I saved that picture and I will send it to the next person who sends me

something like one of my co-workers did a couple of weeks ago: a country road under a storm-cloudy sky with two enormous hands in a sort of reaching cupped gesture (that had obviously been photoshopped), with a note about how someone had seen this and being at peace seeing God's hands in our lives.

I wrote an email back and inserted a picture of a child blown in half and asked her if her friend's photoshop skills were good enough to see "God's hands" in that, but I didn't send it for fear that the photo was too much.

Why is it okay for SOME folks to send un-solicited over-the-top BUSHIT stuff to others, but NOT okay to respond?

[truedelphi]

13. Can't answer your question though I have pondered it for some time now.

What a weird world.

A friend of mine who is a NUN - a NUN - for Pete's sake, no longer goes on for half hours at a time over Bush's good health (Is she baiting me or what? I'd like to know) now uses the word "conspiracy" a lot whenever I make any talking points about my hatrred for this current Admin's policies.

So I guess I am loonie for thinking that Bush/Cheney and their plans were made in advance and that this war has been only for profit??

[patrice]

14. Yeah, PNAC and the fact that the same people who signed onto it are/were in this

administration are just coincidences.

[truedelphi]

15. Now that I've thought it out, the next time she baits me with the

"Conspiracy" term, I am going to point out that I would rather believe fervently in a conspiracy that was true, than to believe in total nonsense that doesn't carry the "conspiracy" label.

[patrice]

16. I believe that people who have externalized evil, like some I can think of, will always

think that the "good guy" (Bush) is ALWAYS betrayed by a conspiracy against him, because the source of what goes wrong in the world, our own "little" and "not so little" "mistakes" and ir-responsibilities, cop-outs, etc., are NEVER addressed, because they assume them to come from somewhere else, external to themselves. Nuns and other "holy" people might be particularly vulnerable to this way of thinking, because their whole lives are about them being "holy", so, of course, when bad things happen to good folks, like GWB, those bad things are the result of conspiracies against their goodness. It's a VERY childish way of thinking.

[maxidivine]

22. that is terrible

But don't think that U.S. forces are to blame for everything going on there. These groups of people jumped on the power vacuum when hussein's government was toppled and immediately started killing each other off in droves. They have some seriously deficient cultural checks and balances on this sort of intra-community warfare, and though not every Iraqi is involved in the horrific fighting and death squad executions, enough of them are in on it to make me seriously question whether or not their society will ever be able to recover. They really have no one to blame but themselves for the last five years of violence and murder. Our military is not going door to door at night and executing families, Iraqis are doing that. Things are slowly starting to stabilize, but not quickly enough, and if it were not for the awful doctrines those people follow our post-invasion occupation would have been very smooth and we would not be counting civilian casualties by the hundred thousand.

[nashville_brook]

17. exactly.

[alphafemale]

3. But they are sending people back to Iraq injured aren't they? nt

[Nikki Stone1]

7. "Stop Loss" kills.

They're just using these guys up until they are dead.

[katmondoo]

8. A friend who served in the Navy in World War 2

told of many who saw USSR stamped on shipping containers being loaded onto a ship they were to sail on committed many acts of self harm just to not go to Russia. At that time many ships went down going to Russia, far more than to any other port.

[barbtries]

9. end the occupation

and they'll stop hurting themselves.

[JohnyCanuck]

11. "We're definitely concerned," says Ritchie.

"We hope they'll talk to us rather than self-harm."

Yeah right Col. Rictchie. If all you mean is you and the army shrinks will talk a bit of psychobabble to them, maybe hand out some valium and then send them right back into the Iraqi meat grinder, your offer ain't worth shit.

[patrice]

12. Psychobabble + trips to the chaplain for religious nostrums. nt

[maxidivine]

23. Actually the Chaplains do more than just

emit religious phrases. The bulk of their work is in counseling, they facilitate many forms of counseling and almost all of it is secular, unless the person asking for counseling wants it in a religious framework.

Don't down on Army chaplains, the chaplain corps tends to attract some of the best people in uniform. Most all have a heart of gold, and it is over the line to criticize someone working a tough job like that based on antiwar sentiment alone. Please think about what you write before you post it.

[truedelphi]

18. The double talk of the Army spokespeople.

Disgusting, disturbing and on and on ad nauseum.

Their talking points alone would have me blowing my brains out.

[maxidivine]

19. It isn't soldiers with any backbone

who would do this, leaving their brothers-in-arms out in the heat, reducing their units strength and quite possibly being indirectly responsible for the death or injury of their fellow soldiers once the unit arrives in theater. One less soldier may mean one vehicle in a convoy down a pair of eyes, may mean one convoy that missed warning signs that results in the convoy being attacked.

[elehhhhna]

20. i get your point. why would the bro's want soldiers w/ "no backbone" on duty with them anyway?

Gotta be desperate and somewhat unhinged inflict self-injury.

[Blue_Tires]

21. you can announce that you're gay?

or threaten to expose graft, profiteering, corruption, torture, black ops and other fun things....

[maxidivine]

25. Don't think that works

And how do you propose that a low-ranking soldier go about blackmailing his chain of command with "profiteering, corruption, torture, black ops"? Saying you are gay doesn't really accomplish anything as far as I know, and besides, just because there is a don't as don't tell policy does not mean that there are no homosexuals in the military, there are plenty. Don't ask don't tell is a policy that serves to allow the military to protect people from discrimination and hate speech yet at the same time avoid having to outwardly accept homosexuals and the resulting massive restructuring of the forces and accomodations that would result. Since soldiers of different sexes must have separate living accomodations, what would the military do if it suddenly had to have accomodations for every single group out there? The premise in the service is that when you enter, you are all equal and that only your own merits will set you apart from your brothers in arms. And if they need to separate all males and females, because they design and plan around heterosexuals, than the goal is to keep people who are likely to get sexual with each other in sepaate accomodations. If they were to openly acknowledge that gays are fine in the military, they would then have to make separate individual sleeping arrangements for every single homosexual soldier. The cost would be astronomical, both in money and in manhours of planning and implementation.

Why would it be worth it? what possible gain could a homosexual wanting to join the service have if the military left its don't ask don't tell policy behind? a feeling of freedom? At what cost? a totally ineffective fighting force that has been bound by policies to make people "feel" better?

[RadiationTherapy]

24. Hell, I think about this for MY job... at a LIBRARY.

I hope these soldiers can forgive themselves and move on with their lives. I am so sorry for them.