Veterans For America

Five US service members were gunned down by a fellow soldier at a counseling center on an American military base near the Baghdad airport. This is the sort of worst-case scenario that VFA has long feared: untreated stress and psychological injuries leading our hardest-suffering troops to take matters violently into their own hands. Will this prompt the Pentagon into looking deeply and seriously at the issue of combat stress?

Multiple deployments and too little time between tours, coupled with too little mental health screening prior to and after deployments, are creating a mounting problem of deadly stress in our ranks. Some say a tragedy like what happened at Camp Victory was “inevitable.” But the fact is, simply, our troops need more comprehensive care. While shooting incidents like Monday’s are rare, cases of troops taking their own lives are sadly all too common; “More than 230 active soldiers, airmen and marines committed suicide last year - the highest military suicide statistic in nearly 30 years. In January, more U.S. soldiers killed themselves than died in Iraq and Afghanistan combined.“

To the mental health professionals and others following stress in our military, the deadly shooting incident is distressing but “not surprising,” said Aaron Glantz, the Rosalynn Carter Fellow for Mental Health Journalism at the Carter Center. “This Columbine-style shooting in Iraq is shocking, but unfortunately is not surprising,” he said. “For eight years now, the Army has stood by silently as more and more American soldiers have taken their own lives under the strain of repeated deployments, an acute lack of mental health services, and a back-door draft. It was only a matter of time before a stressed-out soldier pointed his gun at comrades rather than himself.“

The Army sergeant who turned the gun on his fellow soldiers was apparently on his third tour to Iraq and had been referred for mental health issues but had not previously sought help for combat stress. He had apparently attempted to go to counseling clinic earlier in the day but had been turned away after getting into an argument with others — and his gun had been taken from him as a precaution. Among those killed and injured were staffers at the counseling center. 

Even now, more than six years after the start of the Iraq War and nearly eight years after the start of the war in Afghanistan, major gaps in mental health screening persist for our troops deploying to combat. And for anyone familiar with the tragedies that have unfolded at Fort Carson, it is clear that untreated combat stress can lead to violence on the home front. Combat trauma haunts our troops, even in their sleep, even long after they’ve left the battlefield. 

President Obama and Defense Secretary Gates express their horror after the incident, and pledge to give the issue their “highest-priority attention.”

In other news, the top US general in Afghanistan has been replaced.