Dear CCI Friends,
I don’t know whether you get as much information on these topics as I get, but I can’t avoid choosing to spend 2020 doing everything I can do to reject war-making and war continuation. We comfortable people here in America MUST come to grips with what is going on in our name and with our tax dollars. Please help with educating the American public in 2020 — so many are blithely unaware of these facts below.
Sharon Tennison
Center for Citizen Initiatives
And the Armies that Remained Suffered: Veterans, Moral Injury and Suicide
November 8, 2019
By Matthew Hoh
I was very pleased to see the New York Times editorial on November 1, 2019, Suicide Has Been Deadlier than Combat for the Military. As a combat veteran myself and someone who has struggled with suicidality since the Iraq war I am grateful for such public attention to the issue of veteran suicides, particularly as I know many who have been lost to it. However, the Times editorial board made a serious error when it stated “Military officials note that the suicide rates for service members and veterans are comparable to the general population after adjusting for the military’s demographics, predominantly young and male.” By incorrectly stating veteran suicide rates* are comparable to civilian suicide rates the Times makes the consequences of war seem tragic yet statistically insignificant. The reality is that deaths by suicide often kill veterans at a level greater than combat, while the primary reason for these deaths lie in the immoral and ghastly nature of war itself.
To the Times’ discredit annual suicide data provided by the Veterans Administration (VA) since 2012 clearly notes that veteran suicide rates when compared with the civilian population are adjusted for age and sex. In the 2019 National Veteran Suicide Prevention Annual Reporton pages 10 and 11 the VA reports that adjusted for age and sex the suicide rate for the veteran population is 1.5 times that of the civilian population; military veterans make up 8% of the US adult population, but account for 13.5% of the adult suicides in the US (page 5).