News Analysis: June 2, 2009
It’s long been known — that increasing the amount of dwell time, or time home between deployments, would greatly reduce the grim strain on our overworked Guard and Reserve forces. The Guard and Reserve weren’t designed to operate for long periods at a high operational tempo and now is the time to ease the deployment crush, according to Gen. Craig McKinley, the chief of the National Guard Bureau.
We must remember our troops and veterans beyond Memorial Day, says Rep. Joe Sestak, D-Pennsylvania. Our troops are tired, stressed and suffering trauma. Military spouses suffer mental health problems at rates comparable to their deployed partners. “As for the men and women deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, many go outside the wire every day for entire 15- month deployments, not knowing if the car beside them, or even a person walking down the street, will explode,” Sestak wrote. “A 2008 Army survey reported that more than one in eight soldiers in these conflicts take anti-depressants, anti-anxiety medications or sleeping pills. Yet the number of behavioral health workers in the theater of combat decreased from one for every 387 troops in 2004 to one for every 734 in 2007.” New research suggests that frequent family moves — common to military families — increase the risk of suicidal behavior among children. This is still more hard cold proof of how much we owe our military families and far we still have to go to honor their commitment to all of us.
In 2007, then-Senator Barack Obama worked with VFA to introduce and pass Senate Bill 1271, which mandated a study on the readjustment needs of members of our military. VFA is working with the Institute of Medicine (IOM) on the completion of this study that seeks to find out more about the mental and physical health of veterans and active duty members serving in Iraq, as well as their families. The IOM’s Committee to Assess the Readjustment Needs of Military Personnel, Veterans, and their Families will hold public town-hall meetings at 7-9 pm today in both Jacksonville, NC and Fayetteville, NC. All interested Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) or Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) veterans, active duty personnel, health providers, family members, and other interested parties are invited to participate in this information-gathering session. Please alert veterans that are able to attend about this important event.
The Taliban prove elusive. Will Twittering the Taliban be at all effective? A low profile for US troops in Basra, Iraq?
As if military service weren’t stressful enough, now there’s been a fatal shooting at a military recruiting center in Arkansas…