Remember when the only thing all of the pro-war people wanted to talk about was "supporting the troops?"
Army leaders are expressing increased alarm about the mental health of soldiers who would be sent back to the front again and again under plans that call for troop numbers to be sustained at high levels in Iraq for this year and beyond.
Among combat troops sent to Iraq for the third or fourth time, more than one in four show signs of anxiety, depression or acute stress, according to an official Army survey of soldiers' mental health.The stress of long and multiple deployments to Iraq is just one of the concerns being voiced by senior military officers in Washington as Gen. David H. Petraeus, the senior Iraq commander, prepares to tell Congress this week that he is not ready to endorse any drawdowns beyond those already scheduled through July.
President Bush has signaled that he will endorse General Petraeus's recommendation, a decision that will leave close to 140,000 American troops in Iraq at least through the summer. But in a meeting with Mr. Bush late last month in advance of General Petraeus's testimony, the Joint Chiefs of Staff expressed deep concern about stress on the force, senior Defense Department and military officials said.
Among the 513,000 active-duty soldiers who have served in Iraq since the invasion of 2003, more than 197,000 have deployed more than once, and more than 53,000 have deployed three or more times, according to a separate set of statistics provided this week by Army personnel officers. The percentage of troops sent back to Iraq for repeat deployments would have to increase in the months ahead.
The Army study of mental health showed that 27 percent of noncommissioned officers -- a critically important group -- on their third or fourth tour exhibited symptoms commonly referred to as post-traumatic stress disorders. That figure is far higher than the roughly 12 percent who exhibit those symptoms after one tour and the 18.5 percent who develop the disorders after a second deployment, according to the study, which was conducted by the Army surgeon general's Mental Health Advisory Team.
This goes well beyond the idea that "war is hell." It is, and that's why more than 1 in 10 people who return from was face problems with PTSD. That's both inevitable and entirely predictable. If you are going to fight war, there are going to be some severe consequences for the people who go and fight it.
What is not inevitable, however, is a war in which you ask the same people to return to the front lines time after time after time after time after time. That is not the way wars are normally fought, and this statistic begins to give you a sense of why. We are now nearing 1 in 3 returning vets suffering from PTSD. The long-term implications of that, both generally as a society and specifically as a military superpower, are enormous.
This was, we must always remember, a war of choice. We chose this war. We chose when to start it. We chose how to fight it. We chose how to plan, or not to plan, for its aftermath. Unlike the great World Wars of the 20th century, both the timing and the methods of execution were entirely up to us. And what that means is that ultimately, this is how we have chosen to treat the men and women wearing our nation's uniform. This is how we as a nation have chosen to "support" our troops.
It did not have to be like this. It does not have to continue to be like this. All of this is a choice.
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