Archive for the 'War in Afghanistan' Category
May 30th, 2007 by Progressive Wednesday
Sign:
I’s been well-documented at this point that our returning soldiers are getting sub-par medical care, far worse than we’d wish on anyone, let alone women and men who’ve sacrificed their minds, bodies, and spirits in our name. So we think this item on this week’s “to-do” list falls under the category of “The Very Least We Can Do, Daddy-O and Mommy-O.”
All we’re asking you to do is to read over this petition provided by the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America demanding improved mental health care for our returning vets. Then, please, please, please sign it.
Need some stats and info to better understand the importance of this? Then it’s stats and info you get:
- According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services: “In 2002 and 2003, approximately 340,000 male veterans had co-occurring [serious mental illness] and a substance use disorder.” Male vets aged 18 to 25 had a significantly higher rate than those 26 to 54 or those aged 55 or older.
- The Office of Applied Studies, a federal organization, reports that: “In 2002 and 2003, two million of male veterans aged 18 or older were dependent on or abusing alcohol or illicit drugs.”
- From 2002 to 2005, approximately 19,000 veterans of the War in Iraq and the War in Afghanistan were treated for post-traumatic stress disorder at VA medical centers or VA Vet Centers. This is according to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
- Again, according the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs: “The group [of Iraq and Afghanistan War veterans] with the highest rate of risk for mental health problems and PTSD are those between 18 and 24. Young soldiers were three times as likely as those over 40 to be diagnosed with PTSD and/or another mental health disorder.”
- The Commission on Care for America’s Returning Wounded Warriors — a commission created by President Bush — found that: “The military system does not have enough resources, funding or personnel to adequately support the psychiatric health of service members and their families in peace and during conflict.”
- And it’s not just men afflicted: “Nationwide, the VA has diagnosed 4,000 women with PTSD.”
- It might be hard for those of us who haven�t experiences post-traumatic stress disorder to understand what that means. PTSD is a reaction to stressful events that can lead to flashbacks, nightmares, insomnia, anxiety attacks, outbursts of anger, depression, decreased self-esteem, loss of sustained beliefs about people or society, hopelessness, a sense of being permanently damaged, difficulties in previously established relationships, hyper-arousal (“jumpiness”), memory loss, emotional detachment and numbness, violence, alcohol and drug addiction, and suicide. (This information comes from a variety of sources: the National Center for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, the U.S. Public Health Service, and the National Institute of Mental Health, amongst others.)
- But to understand this further, it helps to read a personal account, which you can read by clicking this sentence.
So again, please sign the petition created by the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. Just click this sentence. It’ll take you about 16 seconds.
April 20th, 2007 by Matt
This comes to us from Sojourners:
More than 155,000 women have done military service in Iraq and Afghanistan. More than 16,000 of those women are single mothers, according to the Pentagon.
Yet another reason to truly support our troops. Yet another reason to support independent presses.
April 7th, 2007 by Matt
A few months back, I read an interview in Esquire of Bryan Anderson, a 25-year-old triple-amputee who served in the War in Iraq. He’s one of the 24,518 who’ve been wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan.
One of the quotations from the piece appears now and again on our sidebar “One Progressive Thought,” and it goes like this: “If you’re not falling, you’re not trying.” Bryan, of course, meant in terms of his physical therapy, but he also says that it’s become his motto.
The interview is extensive, funny, inspirational, smart, and dark, and it paints a picture of war that you can’t wipe clean from your mind, even if you wanted to.
Guys and gals like Bryan need our help, and we’ve set up a fund through Homes for Our Troops to do just that. Homes for Our Troops needs your help, and we’re hoping to raise $250, a modest sum, for this fine and unfortunately necessary organization. (Bryan has been helped by a similar organization called the Wounded Heroes Foundation. You can donate by clicking this sentence.)
We thought we’d share more of Bryan’s story in his own words, so here are some other quotations from the article (you can read the entire piece by clicking here):
Editor’s note: the following contains some graphic language and descriptions.
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“I think the only time I would agree with war is if there’s a childish country that wants to do something really, really stupid and won’t listen to anybody. Then it might be worth it.”
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“At any moment, anything could happen. We were lucky for ten months. We knew we would get hit. It was always a question of how bad it would be. I never thought it would be this bad.”
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“[After the explosion], I was lying there. Before I said anything, I wiped my face because I felt blood and the flies were all over, and the first thing I saw was my finger gone. Okay, not so bad. Then I turned my hand over, and the whole thing looked like ground beef. But it still looked all right, kind of. I could see bone. Anyway, while I’m looking at this, I went to wipe my face with my left hand and there was nothing there. Oh, fuck. After that I looked down at my legs, and right as I saw what had happened, my friend grabbed my forehead and pushed it down, hoping that I hadn’t seen. But I did. I knew they were gone.”
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“I want to be a stuntman. I’m an adrenaline junkie. I like going fast and all that stuff. And now that I’m like this, and I have an identical twin brother who’s just as crazy as I am. I’m hoping we can make something happen of it.”
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“For the most part, I dream that I’m full-bodied.”
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“I’ve been getting tats since I was eighteen. I had nine tattoos. After the explosion, I had six and a half. On my left inner forearm I have the Chinese symbol for life. Go figure.”
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“I don’t regret anything.”
April 5th, 2007 by Matt
The U.S. Senate recently passed a war-spending bill to further fund the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Regardless of how you feel about the war, none of us want to see our troops going without food, shelter, or protective equipment, and we all want them back as soon as possible. Not to sound fatalistic, but see, with politicians, there’s always a hitch.
This nugget of pyrite comes to us c/o the Washington D.C. Examiner:
Like their counterparts in the House, the Senate has larded its version of an “emergency– war spending bill with nearly $20 billion in pork-barrel outlays, including $100 million for the two major political parties' 2008 presidential conventions.
The $100 million for the political party conventions — $50 million for the Democratic convention in Denver and $50 million for the Republican convention in St. Paul, Minn. — is included in a section described as “Katrina recovery, veterans' care and for other purposes.–
“Other purposes” — nice.
But this is supposed to okey and also dokey because: “The Senate Appropriations Committee noted that the committee provided roughly $50 million to help defray the costs of policing the 2004 conventions.”
So, let me get this straight — the two parties with a stranglehold on our political system are throwing parties for themselves, and we’re helping to foot the bill. Maybe someone needs sit the Senate Appropriations Committee down like a four-year-old and explain that just because you did something naughty before and didn’t get caught that it doesn’t make it okay to do it again.
Before my vitriol percolates so much that the coffee of my logic makes no sense (see, it’s already happening!), let’s put $100 million into perspective. With that money, we could build 500-1000 new homes in post-Katrina New Orleans. And according to the World Food Programme, 19 cents will feed a school child in a developing country for one day. With $100 million we could feed 1,441,961 completely impoverished children for a year.
To quote our pal Jeff Tweedy, ax-slinger and lead-singer of Wilco: “Republicans and Democrats can’t give you the facts.” Well, we do. We always will.
March 29th, 2007 by Matt
Here’s video of Commander Richard Jadick on The Daily Show talking about his new book On Call In Hell, which details his experience as a marine doctor during the War in Iraq. It’s easy to forget that, among all the other soldiers redefining courage every day, there are doctors saving life after life after life. It takes a different kind of strength, I’d imagine, to heal when surrounded by destruction, to be faced with injuries no med school can prepare you for handling.
One of the major values in medical ethics is “First, do no harm.” These doctors, very literally, undo harm. We owe them, just as we owe our soldiers, more than we can repay them. So check out this video. Learn a bit. Appreciate. Admire. Applaud.
Editor’s note: We’ve been having a wee bit o’ trouble with this video player. Our advice is to click the play button, then pause the sucker. Wait a minute. Think about how much you love us. Then hit play again. You might still have to wait a few seconds. If that doesn’t do the trick, click this sentence to go to the website where the video is hosted. Thank ya. Oh, and the video contains some graphic language and descriptions. Consider yourself “warned.”
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March 27th, 2007 by Matt
Fourteen soldiers have died in Iraq and Afghanistan since we ran our Wednesday topic on truly supporting our troops. Each one of those men and women remind us how much we owe to all the others still living and fighting and representing us, regardless of our own opinions about the two wars.
Please consider giving the Wednesday another look. Learn the facts. See the war for yourself. Maybe ship a soldier a box of simple supplies. Help us build wounded vets new homes. Or just drop some of our troops e-mails from home.
Each of these actions are simple. And simpler still when compared to what’s going on, as the George M. Cohan song reminds us, over there.
March 21st, 2007 by Progressive Wednesday
Problem:
“We– aren't at war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Our soldiers are.
Both wars individually have gone on longer than the U.S. involvement in the War of 1812, Mexican War, Civil War, Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II, Korean War, and Persian Gulf War. There doesn't seem to be an end in sight for either.
Our fellow Americans are sweating and dodging, not just bullets, but bombs in the desert and on our behalves.
We know some of them personally. We miss them. We want them home.
You might be thinking: There's nothing I can do to help stop the wars. That's too big for me to tackle. We respectfully disagree, but that's not the problem we're talking about this Wednesday.
We owe our soldiers more than we can repay them. That's the problem.
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Make Progress:
Diane was a student of mine at Ohio State. During the autumn quarter, Diane asked to be excused one Friday. Why? Because she was going to marry her boyfriend before he was shipped off to Iraq. Most of my students asked for time off because their friends needed to be bailed out of jail or because their Great Aunt conveniently died for the seventh time right before a paper was due. So, Diane's request couldn't possibly be refused. And she and her one-and-only did indeed wed.
After winter break, Diane signed up to be in another of my writing courses. This quarter, she seemed transformed. Some days she'd be filled with a kind of bubbly hope, the kind you see in people truly in love. Other days, she'd snap at fellow students, fall asleep in class (surprising since it started at 2 pm), and miss office hours appointments she'd scheduled with me. While discussing one of her papers, she started crying, dropped the paper in the trash can, and slowly walked out of the room backwards.
Come spring, I could tell Diane was a wreck. She pulled me aside on the second day of course to ask if it was okay if she left class every once and a while. I thought this was strange because my students never had to ask to go to the restroom, grab a snack, or get a drink of water. Hell, they could even take off for a minute or two to stretch if they needed to. “I need to leave sometimes,– she said, “to go outside and cry.–
And she did. Often. I'd say at least twice a week. Of course, she also missed at least one class a week. As the quarter moved along, Diane would forget to turn in assignments completely or would just turn in one page for a five-page essay. She'd pop by my office hours just to talk about the latest letter she'd received from her husband. She'd ask me to read them. Over the course of the year, I watched her weight dramatically drop to unhealthy levels.
Summer came and went, and the next autumn I saw Diane on campus the first day of classes. She smiled at me with her lips. I assumed her husband had returned. He hadn't.
“I got divorced,– she told me. “I just couldn't take it any more. I love him. But it stopped being worth it. The love, I mean.–
This is a cost of war. This is one side of war.
But this Wednesday, the day after the four year anniversary of the War in Iraq, we're going to look closely at war from the other side. Please, we know it's easier to do, but don't look away.
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