The military just can’t figure out why veteran and active duty suicides are at an all time high. Col. Wilkerson offers some reasons why.
- 18 years of constant wars have been the most inequitable years in US history. That is, the poor and the disadvantaged have done the bleeding and dying while the well-off have escaped scot-free. That reality alone must drive some GIs to despair.
- GI’s have killed or helped to kill more than 400,000 human beings in these wars.
- The United States—with many of these GIs as the executors—has committed war crimes from Bagram to Baghdad and from Guantanamo to Bangkok. The United States has broken treaties, defied the rule of law, and smashed international covenants at will. To top it off, today the US president wants to pardon war criminals.
- The 99 percent of America with no skin in the game of war makes sure to say quite frequently “thank you for your service” to any of these GIs encountered at airports, in restaurants, on the street, or elsewhere. From my own experience talking with serving troops and veterans—including a triple-amputee at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center— nothing galls them more. They see the 99 percent assuaging their guilt with a few meaningless words that don’t do a thing to alleviate the GIs’ concerns.
- America currently has a president with bone spurs, had a vice president before him who had better things to do than go to war, and a president whose father got him into the Texas Air National Guard to fly a plane (a duty George W. Bush more often failed than succeeded in performing). Bill Clinton, meanwhile, allegedly cheated his way out of ROTC. This all in the last generation.
