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American Empire blues
Soldier suicide and recession depression on the rise
By Nathan Johnson
The total number of soldier suicides rivals the number of combat casualties.
For the first time since the Vietnam War, the suicide rate of active-duty soldiers is set to surpass that of America’s civilian population, 19.5 per 100,000. Last year the total number of such suicides was 115. But that record is set to be broken, as there have already been 62 confirmed and 31 suspected cases of suicide this year. Every day 5 suicide attempts are made by U.S. soldiers.
The total is even higher when veterans are taken into account. The Deputy Chief Patient Care Services Officer for Mental Health at the Department of Veterans Affairs revealed that an average of four Iraq and Afghanistan veterans commit suicide every day. The total number of soldier suicides rivals the number of combat casualties.
The leading causes of soldier suicides include financial issues and troubled relationships, but above all the stress of war, military indoctrination and bearing the heavy conscience of carrying out an occupation are considered the greatest causes.
When Jason Moon, a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War, spoke at UWM last year he explained why the occupation can’t be conpleted. The United States is killing so many innocent civilians that reconciliation has become impossible. Family members and Iraqis at large are avenging themselves in the most desperate ways possible, as direct confrontation is implausible.
Despite the corporate media’s enthusiastic involvement in the government’s demonization of Muslims, Arabs and Middle-Easterners, people do not resort to suicide bombing unless they are driven by the most extreme circumstances. All people have a basic instinct to live; it takes extreme provocation to kill this instinct and cause multitudes of people to engage in suicide attacks.
History shows that suicide bombing only occurs as the result of occupation. Just as there will always be gangs as long as there is poverty, there will always be suicide bombing as a result of war and occupation when the occupied have no (alternative) means of effecting change.
The American military-industrial complex very clearly relates the connected issues of economics and militarization. But as many people feel, while war is profitable it is not a real solution. Economically speaking, military spending and other anti-cyclical policies only accelerate inflation. It’s a lose-lose situation for the working class. The effectiveness of anti-cyclical policies is limited by the instability of the currency, with galloping inflation is a constant risk. Analysts have already anticipated inflation could reach double digits before the end of the recession.
Despite the corporate media’s attempt to shift the blame of inflation onto gas prices (that is, the poor Middle-Eastern countries), the greater reason is quite apparent. It is the bloated American military. The Iraq occupation alone will cost America upwards of $3 trillion, all of which spending is entirely unproductive from an economic standpoint. The only exception to this would be the miserly spending on Iraq’s infrastructure.
As if military spending wasn’t enough, the United States is also the largest arms seller in the world. It’s no coincidence that U.S. arms sales are up an outrageous 45 percent from last year, and will fetch an estimated $34 billion on the overseas arms market.
While certain politicians reluctantly admit that the Iraq war was a mistake, you won’t hear any of them speaking out about America’s permanent arms economy. Violence is too essential a component of the status quo of America’s corporate elite to even broach the subject.
At home, approximately 375,000 jobs were lost over the course of the summer, with the unemployment rate currently at 6.1 percent and rising. The rate is actually even higher, as the statistic doesn’t include people in jail or who have given up the search for employment. During times of economic growth the working class feels the stress of bustling work. During recession it feels the distress of living check-to-check. At all times the working class feels the hysteria of materialism beating down on it, fostering a sense of inadequacy and alienation.
Recession naturally causes the working class to feel an increased sense of anxiety, which is just a few steps away from clinical depression, which in turn is not so distant from a suicide attempt. While we obviously haven’t seen an increase in the rate of suicide comparable to that of the Great Depression, the working class is definitely feeling recession depression.
Inflation, the occupation of Iraq, soldiers committing suicide, unemployment- all these issues are interconnected. As Trotsky wrote, “Foreign policy is everywhere and always a continuation of domestic policy, for it is conducted by the same ruling class and pursues the same historic goals.”
> Comments
Greg on Sep 15, 2008 at 01:51 PM:
Nice article. Thoughtfull and a good point.