The Military's Headache Is Getting Worse

Well this news is sad, but not terribly unexpected. I’m sure you would find similar stats with those who came back from any conflict. At least you would have if mental heath services were at the level they are today back when those conflicts occurred.
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My experience with friends of mine who served in Iraq and Afghanistan is that they have very few people to talk to because civilians who have never served in combat cannot possibly relate to a combat vet’s experience and hence their outlook going forward. Many of my friends were also discouraged by the fact that they were no longer in the company of their brothers in arms, whom they seemed to believe (probably correctly) were the only people who could truly relate to themselves on the same level.
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All of this is surely exacerbated by morons like Code Pink and the @ssho!es at my University who viscerally attack soldiers coming back as “baby killers” and the like. It’s one thing to be against the war(s), it’s a whole other ballpark to spit on those who followed orders and were lucky enough to survive with all their limbs intact.

Hmmmm….
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Wonder what effect the neverending wars/deployments to the Middle East have to do with this?
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When was the last time this country was engaged in a conflict in which the same people were asked (repeatedly) to sacrifice for the greater good over so long a period of time without the REST of the “beneficiaries” being required to pitch in and sacrifice SOMETHING?

While some may argue over the term “beneficiaries”, that’s an argument I don’t want to get into. However, the answer to your question is probably Vietnam.

Supposedly, that’s US. The American people. So we don’t have to fight them in Des Moines or Kansas City.
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But your point is taken. The Vietnam diff is that there was a least the pretense of shared sacrifice in the form of a loophole-riddled draft back then.
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Supposedly, the sacrifice we’re supposed to make is to go out and spend ourselves into a stupor. Oh, and maybe a magnetic “ribbon” (or two) on the trunk lid to show solidarity with the troops.

Another difference is that the tour of duty in Vietnam was normally 1 year, with little possibility of another deployment, not only for the draftees who carried the war but for the career soldiers as well, as opposed to repeated and open-ended deployments presently, exacerbated by the length of the current wars.

Just one more thought, that the current wars don’t even come close to the human toll and brutality of Vietnam. Yet.

Just one more thought, that the current wars don’t even come close to the human toll and brutality of Vietnam. Yet.
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Just on the individual soldiers with those repeated deployments and the toll on family stability.

I’d be interested to find out if there are ideas on how to address the gap between female/male adjustment issues.

I’m not sure that Vietnam only had 1 deployment, my uncle did 3 tours in Vietnam He may have asked for the extras tho, I’ll have to ask him about that.
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Of course now James, you didn’t have to deploy people 3,4,5 times then because you could draft people to replace them. With the all volunteer force of today it’s a much smaller pool of people from whom to choose which people to send.
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This pool problem is exacerbated (in my personal opinion) by the softness of todays youth who aren’t willing to fight for anything except maybe that new Xbox game at Best Buy. People from my [former] University ask me all the time “Are you really joining the Marines? Are you crazy? You know you’ll get send ‘over there’ don’t you?” I read into this (possibly too much) “Wow, you’re crazy. I would never join the military. It’s too dangerous/scary/not PC/against my principles/conservative/[insert random excuse here].”
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Which is all the more troubling to me since I don’t know more than like 3 people who’ve graduated in the past two years, myself included, who can find a job better than McD’s.

My reason for pussying out is worse: I would have a significant coping problem with sharing a room with 20+ guys for an extended period of time.

formerlyjames,

There are two reasons you’re not seeing the kind of casualties in Iraq/Afghanistan we saw in Vietnam, and it’s not related to the intensity or frequency of combat. It’s due to the massive advancements in medical technology vs. the treatment options that used to be available, and it’s due to the incredible advancements in materials science that have led to our current body armor.

Generally speaking, if a guy isn’t insta-killed, he’s going to make it, he’ll just be missing a leg or arm or two. The survival rate of troops who make it to med centers alive in theater is over 90%. The surgeons and docs there deserve tons of credit. So does the Interceptor vest. I know plenty of guys who either had their lives saved or were prevented from even sustaining anything worse than bruised ribs because of it.

With Vietnam era tech and equipment we’d have far higher casualties than they did in that war.

“Stop Gap” was the biggest insult to be thrown at the all-volunteer force in recent memory.
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The gall of a Pentagon rep to stand up and justify extending tours/enlistments because “we can do it because it’s in their contract – they should have read it when they signed it” was just too much.
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They deserve more than “lawyer-speak” and contract technicalities coming from their leadership.

“They deserve more than “lawyer-speak” and contract technicalities coming from their leadership.”
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I certainly agree with that statement, but it doesn’t change the fact that it’s become difficult to replace people quickly enough to keep enough front-line troops on the front-line.
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“I would have a significant coping problem with sharing a room with 20+ guys for an extended period of time.”
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Eh, looking back at college I figure it can’t be worse than the dorms I lived in my freshman and sophomore years… actually it probably wouldn’t be possible for it to be worse than those hell holes.