Sour Relief
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, American GIs were going absent without leave (AWOL) because they didn’t want to fight in Vietnam. Today, the new generation of American GIs are going AWOL more because they need treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Civilian attorney James Branum recently told Dahr Jamail of Inter Press Service that his client, Eric Jasinski, 23, took matters into his own hands after not receiving the proper care from the military’s mental health facilities. “[Jasinski] has heavy duty PTSD and never would have gone AWOL if he’d gotten the help he needed from the military,” said Branum. “This case highlights the need of the military to provide better mental health care for its soldiers.”
Veterans Seek Casualty Plan From Obama Administration
WASHINGTON, D.C. – In the late 1960s and early 1970s, American GIs were going absent without leave (AWOL) because they didn’t want to fight in Vietnam.
Today, the new generation of American GIs are going AWOL more because they need treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Civilian attorney James Branum recently told Dahr Jamail of Inter Press Service that his client, Eric Jasinski, 23, took matters into his own hands after not receiving the proper care from the military’s mental health facilities.
“[Jasinski] has heavy duty PTSD and never would have gone AWOL if he’d gotten the help he needed from the military,” said Branum. “This case highlights the need of the military to provide better mental health care for its soldiers.”
Before Jasinski’s deployment, personal matters already complicated his life, such as a fresh divorce and his grandmother’s death.
Jasinski said he acquired severe PTSD after serving in Iraq for a year as an Army intelligence analyst.
His job was to collect data used to direct strikes on targets from the air; the violence and deaths he caused compounded his guilt feelings, he said.
Not to mention that the lifes of two of his friends were shattered in Iraq: one died while the other lost his legs from a bomb.
Jasinski was diagnosed with PTSD from a civilian doctor and given medication; however, upon learning he would have to serve another deployment through the stop-loss program, he decided to go on the run.
Jasinski said he turned himself over to authorities at Fort Hood in Texas on Dec. 11 after a year because he wanted to get on with his life and become a social worker to help others.
Jasinski’s lawyer said that their hope is to have the military treat Jasinski or grant him a medical discharge. No court martial.
What Obama Plan?
Jasinski’s advice for troops experiencing PTSD symptoms but not receiving care from the military is to seek care for themselves, no matter the financial cost.
“Go see a civilian, and hopefully that therapist will help you; even then I’m not sure that will help, but you have to take that chance,” he told IPS.
But that’s Jasinski’s plan.
The Obama administration has yet to come up with policy to care for the 30,000 U.S. soldiers he wants to deploy to Afghanistan when they return home.
Paul Sullivan, executive director of Veterans for Common Sense (VCS), said in a op-ed piece for Truthout.org that during his announcement of the troop escalation on Dec.1 at West Point, President Barack Obama made no mention of caring for the American casualties from the war.
And it’s not like there hasn’t been such a casualty plan before; VCS pointed this out on CNN in October 2006 (during the Bush administration) before the Walter Reed scandal broke.
However, Sullivan now placed the responsibility squarely on the shoulders of Obama in his piece “Obama’s Wars, Obama’s Casualties, Obama’s Responsibilities.”
“… let us be very clear: our Nation shall not repeat the mistakes after the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, and the first eight years of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, where the long-term medical needs of our service members and veterans were neglected,” he wrote.
Great Risk
Sullivan cited four major challenges for the U.S. military and the Veteran’s Administration: helping the already 500,000 veteran patients in the military’s system, finding doctors to cover the health care labor shortages, dropping the suicide rate among soldiers, and covering the financial cost of the wars.
If nothing is done to give veterans mental disability benefits, the health of the military and the nation is at great risk.
Sullivan cited independent expert and governmental evidence from the Veterans for Common Sense v. Peake case linking PTSD, depression, suicide, and other psychological and social disorders to deployed soldiers, veterans, and their families.
Under oath, Dr. Gerald Cross, the deputy under secretary for health in the VA, said that “the high rates of PTSD among Iraq veterans are the result of various factors, including multiple deployments, the inability to identify the enemy, the lack of real safe zones and the inadvertent killing of innocent civilians.”
Moreover, the nation’s top suicide expert, Dr. Ronald Maris, said that “depression and PTSD are two of the leading risk factors for suicide.”
The mental health problem is systemic, according to studies by the RAND Corporation and Stanford University.
If two million service members are deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq, and between 18 and 35 percent of them have depression and PTSD, then it stands to reason that the VA must treat between 360,000 and 700,000 soldiers with serious mental health problems.
“The estimates are reasonable, as the VA has already treated more than 227,000 mental health cases from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and 40 percent of our troops have deployed twice or more,” wrote Sullivan.
Already this year, the Army has seen one of its own psychologists allegedly gun down his fellow soldiers at Fort Hood. Major Nidal Hassan’s case will see a court perhaps next year.
But that doesn’t discount the record numbers of suicides reported and confirmed from 2006 to 2009.
The VCS’s casualty plan proposed to President Obama, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, and VA Secretary Eric Shinseki is five-fold: fill the mental health vacancies throughout the VA system; test for mental health problems in soldiers before and after deployment and provide care accordingly; crack down on the stigma of mental health problems in the military ranks; process claims through the VA quicker, which means hiring more staff; and have the VA freely share information about the total human and financial costs of these two wars.
“We can and must do better under President Obama,” wrote Sullivan
‘March Forward’ Plan
And then there’s the plan from “March Forward!,” an organization founded in 2008 that includes veterans and active-duty members of the U.S. military.
Two days after Obama’s announcement, “March Forward” called on active duty members of the military to refuse orders to serve in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The group’s founders say that the refusal must be carried out because the occupations of these two countries are both illegal and immoral.
But, of course, the medical treatment returning soldiers receive is inadequate also.
Said the group in a statement:
“On Dec.1, we got a clear order from President Obama. For many more years, we will be sent to kill, to die, to be maimed and wounded, in a war where ‘victory’ is impossible, against a people who are not our enemies. For over eight years, we have come home in coffins, in wheelchairs, with our skin burned and with our days and nights haunted by the trauma of war. We return home to a VA whose services are so inadequate that active duty soldiers who succumb to suicide outnumber those killed in combat.”
