MENTALLY ILL TROOPS ARE A REALLY BAD IDEA

Tara posted yesterday about how the Pentagon apparently has no problems with sending obviously mentally disturbed soldiers back into battle--in many cases they just hand them some anti-depressants and point them toward the danger zones. Obviously, this is a result of the US overextending its military commitments throughout the world. We just don't have enough men to expand the American empire the way the neo-cons want, so we're making do with what we have--this is the same problem that resulted in the recent recruiting of a teenager with autism.

Needless to say this is no good at all. Tara observed that it's downright inhumane to treat our fighting men and women this way, and a really stupid way to try to win a war. But that's not all that's wrong with forcing mentally ill troops into fighting, as Seattle journalist David Neiwert over at Orcinus shows:

One thing the story only briefly addresses is that veterans damaged psychologically like this also bring their scars home. And when the violence that results is not inwardly directed, it can also be directed outward.

Paul deArmond pointed this out three years ago, as we began this invasion:

Here's an unsettling thought. The last go-round in the Gulf produced at least three spectacular domestic terrorists: Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols (Oklahoma City) and John Mohammed (DC sniper killings). Both McVeigh and Mohammed were reported to be unbalanced by their experience during the Gulf War.

...The levels of stress on our troops is quite high and several sources report that the training and conditioning of troops for agressive behavior is more severe than in the past. Combine this with the continuing spread of anti-government ideologies through terrorism-related conspiracy theories and the encouraging (or at least failure to suppress) of activities like vigilante border partrols which combine racism with xenophobia.

Click here for the rest.

This doesn't even begin to address other kinds of war-spawned violence here in the US, such as domestic abuse: there have already been several murders of spouses by soldiers home from Iraq--my bet is that there are going to be more. And as VA budgets continue to be slashed by our troop-supporting GOP dominated Congress, I'm also betting that we're going to see a big rise in the numbers of obviously crazy homeless street people.

I already know we're going to be in Iraq for years to come. We're going to be feeling the pain from that for a much longer time.

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