Growing number of U.S. soldiers driven to suicide

For the fourth straight year, the number of suicides among active U.S. military personnel has risen at an alarming rate. According to a recent MSNBC.com report, in 2008 alone there were 128 suicides in the Army and 41 more in the Marine Corps.

Unable to cope with PTSD and depression, a growing number of soldiers is turning to suicide.

The per capita breakdown according to the military is as follows: 20.2 per 100,000 Army soldiers, 19 per 100,000 Marines, 11.5 per 100,000 Air Force members, and 11.3 per 100,000 Navy personnel. Such numbers are shocking, and point to ever worsening morale and conditions among the U.S. armed forces during the most recent wave of imperialist aggression and the accompanying global economic decline.

The grim trend extends to military recruiters as well. The Houston Chronicle reports that at least 17 Army recruiters have also killed themselves nationwide in recent months. According to James Larson, a retired senior policy analyst for the Army Recruiting Command: “Recruiters have the highest stress levels of any occupation in the United States—policemen, firemen, special operations, spies—you name it. Head and shoulders—recruiters have the highest stress levels of anybody.”

At the Houston Recruiting Battalion, five recruiters have committed suicide since 2001. Reports indicate that these recruiters were not meeting their recruiting quotas and the leadership was harassing, pressuring and threatening them with discharge from service. Tellingly, four of the recruiters were former combat soldiers recently returned from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Bob Andersson, a father of one of the deceased recruiters, observed, “How could you be over there and see some of the things he saw and dealt with, and try to hire people to go over there and do that?”

In fact, the Army itself actually understands this. In the words of the 2008 Army Posture Statement: “Repeated deployments of longer length combined with shorter dwell time at home have stressed Soldiers and their Families. Rates of suicide and post-traumatic stress disorder have increased.” According to the statement, soldiers are given six months at home, and a list of programs and services to help them and their family adjust. Then they are retrained for a homeland defense or a mid- to high-intensity conflict mission.

PTSD, traumatic brain injury and depression are all risk factors for suicide. However, mainstream media often downplay these aspects, identifying broken marriages, alcohol-substance abuse, childhood abuse, and undiagnosed mental instability as the culprits behind suicides among U.S. troops.

Even more rarely acknowledged is the anger and betrayal soldiers must feel when they finally realize that they have been used in illegal, immoral wars for the profit of the military-industrial complex and its tiny clique of profiteers.

There is no justification for the horrors of war experienced by U.S. troops—horrors that corporate media whitewashes day in and day out for public consumption, but which are well-known to deployed soldiers. Their lives must no longer be wasted for the conduct of criminal atrocities against the targets of imperialism, aimed only at perpetuating the violent rule of a small minority over the vast resources of our planet.

All U.S. armed forces must be brought home—not only from Iraq and Afghanistan but also from the more than 130 countries with U.S. military bases. Members of the military who resort to suicide are not victims of a tragedy; they are victims of U.S. imperialist policy.