Why do War Veterans Commit Suicide or Murder?
By David Swanson
November 06, 2015 "Information
Clearing House" - "War
Is A Crime" - In
two recent
articles in the Los Angeles Times and
the academic
studies that inspired them, the authors investigate the question
of which war veterans are most likely to commit suicide or violent
crimes. Remarkably, the subject of war, their role in war, their
thoughts about the supposed justifications (or lack thereof) of a
war, never come up.
The factors that take the blame are -- apart from
the unbearably obvious "prior suicidality," "prior crime," "weapons
possession," and "mental disorder treatment" -- the following
breakthrough discoveries: maleness, poverty, and "late age of
enlistment." In other words, the very same factors that would be
found in the (less-suicidal and less-murderous) population at large.
That is, men are more violent than women, both among veterans and
non-veterans; the poor are more violent (or at least more likely to
get busted for it) among veterans and non-veterans; and the same
goes for "unemployed" or "dissatisfied with career" or other
near-equivalents of "joined the military at a relatively old age."
In other words, these reports tell us virtually
nothing. Perhaps their goal isn't to tell us something factual so
much as to shift the conversation away from why war causes murder
and suicide, to the question of what was wrong with these soldiers
before they enlisted.
The reason for studying the violence of veterans,
after all, is that violence, as well as PTSD, are
higher than among non-veterans, and the
two (PTSD and violence) are
linked. They are higher (or at least most studies over many
years have said so; there are exceptions) for those who've been in
combat than for those who've been in the military without combat.
They are even higher for those who've been in even more combat. They
are higher for ground troops than for pilots. There are mixed
reports on whether they are higher for drone pilots or traditional
pilots.
The fact that war participation, which itself
consists of committing murder in a manner sanctioned by authorities,
increases criminal violence afterwards, in a setting where it is no
longer sanctioned, ought of course to direct our attention to
the problem of war, not the
problem of which fraction of returning warriors to offer some
modicum of reorientation into nonviolent life. But if you accept
that war is necessary, and that most of the funding for it must go
into profitable weaponry, then you're going to want to both identify
which troops to help and shift the blame to those troops.
The same reporter of the above linked articles
also
wrote one that documents what war participation does to suicide.
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs says that out of 100,000
male veterans 32.1 commit suicide in a year, compared to 28.7 female
veterans. But out of 100,000 male non-veterans, 20.9 commit suicide,
compared to only 5.2 female non-veterans. And "for women ages 18 to
29, veterans kill themselves at nearly 12 times the rate of
nonveterans." Here's how the article begins:
"New government research shows that female
military veterans commit suicide at nearly six times the rate of
other women, a startling finding that experts say poses disturbing
questions about the backgrounds and experiences of women who serve
in the armed forces."
Does it really? Is their background really the
problem? It's not a totally crazy idea. It could be that men and
women inclined toward violence are more likely to join the military
as well as more likely to engage in violence afterward, and more
likely to be armed when they do so. But these reports don't focus
primarily on that question. They try to distinguish which of the men
and women are the (unacceptable, back home-) violence-prone ones.
Yet something causes the figure for male suicides to jump from 20.9
to 32.1. Whatever it is gets absolutely disregarded, as differences
between male and female military experiences are examined
(specifically, the increased frequency of female troops being
raped).
Suppose for a moment that what is at work in the
leap in the male statistic has something to do with war. Sexism and
sexual violence may indeed be an enormous factor for female (and
some male) troops, and it may be far more widespread than the
military says or knows. But those women who do not suffer it,
probably have experiences much more like men's in the military, than
the two groups' experiences out of the military are alike. And the
word for their shared experience is war.
Looking at the youngest age group, "among men 18
to 29 years old, the annual number of suicides per 100,000 people
were 83.3 for veterans and 17.6 for nonveterans. The numbers for
women in that age group: 39.6 and 3.4." Women who've been in the
military are, in that age group, 12 times more likely to kill
themselves, while men are five times more likely. But that can also
be looked at this way: among non-veterans, men are 5 times as likely
to kill themselves as women, while among veterans men are only 2
times as likely to kill themselves as women. When their experience
is the same one -- organized approved violence -- men's and women's
rates of suicide are more similar.
The same
LA Times reporter also has an article simply on the fact
that veteran suicides are higher than non-veteran. But he manages to
brush aside the idea that war has anything to do with this:
"'People's natural instinct is to explain military
suicide by the war-is-hell theory of the world,' said Michael
Schoenbaum, an epidemiologist and military suicide expert at the
National Institute of Mental Health who was not involved in the
study. 'But it's more complicated.'"
Judging by that article it's not more complicated,
it's entirely something else. The impact of war on mental state is
never discussed. Instead, we get this sort of enlightening finding:
"Veterans who had been enlisted in the
rank-and-file committed suicide at nearly twice the rate of former
officers. Keeping with patterns in the general population, being
white, unmarried and male were also risk factors."
Yes, but among veterans the rates are higher than
in the general population. Why?
The answer is, I think, the same as the answer to
the question of why the topic is so studiously avoided. The answer
is
summed up in the recent term:
moral injury. You can't kill and face death and return unchanged
to a world in which you are expected to refrain from all violence
and relax.
And returning to a world kept carefully oblivious
to what you're going through, and eager to blame your demographic
characteristics, must make it all the more difficult.
David Swanson is an American activist, blogger
and author.
http://warisacrime.org/