Our National Disgrace -the mental impact that we inflict on the people who we send into combat.

 Dear Friends,

The media has produced a lot of stories about Graham Platner’s life between the end of his military service (serving three tours of duty with the Marines in Iraq in 2005, 2006 and 2007, and an additional tour of duty with the Army in 2010-2011) and his campaign for the United States Senate. Unfortunately, the media is missing the opportunity to highlight a national disgrace that we don’t talk about enough – the mental impact that we inflict on the people who we send into combat. 

PTSD exists in our society for many reasons, but the rate of PTSD in veterans is higher than the general population and in veterans with combat experience the rates are the highest.  The data is very difficult because of the definitions of PTSD and the subgroups.  For example, I am a Vietnam era Navy veteran, I served quite a bit of time in the area that was classified as the Vietnam “combat zone”, but I was never on land in Vietnam, and I never saw combat.  Obviously, my experience was dramatically different from the experience of a Marine foot soldier in the jungle engaging in firefights. The data does not consistently differentiate between vets who have been deployed to a combat zone, those that have not been so deployed and vets who were in combat, killing people and watching their comrades being killed and maimed.

Keeping the difficulty with the data in mind, it generally indicates that roughly 15% to 20% of Vietnam era vets suffered from PTSD and that even 40 years later 4% continue to suffer from war related PTSD.  In Iraq and Afghanistan roughly15% to 30% of deployed vets suffered from PTSD. The studies demonstrate that combat exposure greatly increases the chance of suffering from PTSD. Substance abuse, suicide and divorce rates are also elevated for veterans and even more for veterans who have experienced PTSD.  In addition, rates for everything are elevated even more if the person we send into combat is younger.

Graham Platner is just one of many vets who have suffered significantly from what we have done to them. He did what we asked him to do – serve four combat tours of duty which nobody should be asked to do. He returned from those battles to face his new challenges of PTSD, substance abuse and relationship difficulties all in part because of what we asked him to do.  After a very dark period in his life, he acknowledged his difficulties, took responsibility for his actions and sought and received help from the government and the people around him.  He has worked hard to improve his life on his road to redemption.  

There are many victims in these scenarios – the people we sent to war as well as their families, friends and others close to them who suffered from their conditions and behavior, but we, the ones who sent them to war, are the villain.  Graham Platner and all our vets deserve our respect, support and forgiveness.  We owe him and all vets the grace to continue their work to become the wonderful people they might have been if we had not damaged their mental health.  

The media should bring this national disgrace into public view so that we can do several things. 

·      We need to understand what we are doing when we send our young people to war and to stop glorifying war and hypermasculinity. 

·      We need to be sure that violence is only used when it is the only available option to achieve a required result.  In my almost 80 years, we have consistently gone to war where other options were available. 

·      We need to fund the VA with the same generosity as we fund the military and our wars.  

·      We need to destigmatize the mental health problems that we inflict on our veterans.    

Thank you for reading and please comment,

The Unabashed Liberal