Suicide Casts Long Shadow After Decade of War

Source

Killeen, Texas - A soldier kills himself and his wife. Another war veteran hangs himself in despair. Yet a third puts a gun to his head and pulls the trigger outside a gas station in a confrontation with Texas lawmen.

Suicides by veterans like these once would have left people reeling in this military community. But troops and their families here these days call it the "new normal" for a US Army that's spent a decade at war.

Melissa Dixon sees the stress in the tattoos she draws on soldiers back from combat.

"Some of them have issues with their wives or their loved ones, where they're fighting, or one will have a friend commit suicide," she said.

Why do we not pay attention to the signs that are all around us?

The US government pumps up the military like it is the best thing to do and to protect your country makes you a true hero. Look what is happening to these people. They are so stressed coming back from war that the fact the country is 'free' doesn't even matter anymore, they do not even have a will to live anymore.

This is terrible and has been a known fact that the homeless rate for veterans is higher than normal and suicides as well.

Weird society we live in that promotes this kind of job that will lead to this kind of life afterwards...

Any thoughts?

Pred...

reply to post by predator0187


This is what happens when you take the national guard who was the weekend warriors and turn them into a mercenary fighting machine like Blackwater. They were to be our last defense against invasion and most of them never signed up to be professional soldiers. Never has a US military been called over and over again into battle. Anyone who thinks the Dept of Defense doesn't know what they are doing to our men are living in a fools paradise.

reply to post by redrose123


I think they know, I just don't think they have any balls to tell the truth about what is going on. They have been trained to follow orders and that is what they do, that is why they end up in higher positions. They never promote the guy that says 'what the he'll are we doing', they promote the ones who say 'yes, sir'.

Pred...

When we send them off to war it's all cool toys, video games, and action movies.
When they come back, maimed and broken, mind full of horrors no one should ever have to endure, we don't want anything to do with them.
War is the greatest obscenity man's pathetic little monkey brain can conjure up.
Disposable Heroes. Disposable heroes indeed.

Solider boy, made of clay now an empty shell twenty one, only son but he served us well bred to kill, not to care do just as we say finished here, greetings death he's yours to take away