madness, madness, war

Coming home to a place you know well and trying to reintegrate after being deployed abroad cannot be comprehended by the average citizen, as well many civilian politicians, community leaders and even some top military brass. This is because we as a nation are insensitivity to others and do not understand what it means to go off and fight for ones life in a brazen and foreign land. Thus it doesn’t surprise me that a person, regardless of any social marker, can flip like a light switch and kill folk in their immediate environment.

For years we have been aware of cases of men and women returning from Iraq and Afghanistan and committing violent criminal acts. Just last month a 21-year old Indiana man killed himself in a movie theater after watching Zombieland. Then there was the case of William Grant Johnson who killed a physician in New York and shot several others before he was captured. And there was Michael James in Hawaii who murdered his wife and son and also killed himself. Then there is Jacob Gregory Swanson of California who killed his girlfriend and committed suicide afterwards. The list goes on and on: William Howell, a Colorado-based Army Special Forces soldier who shot himself in the head in his front yard in March; the attempted murder-suicide at Fort Lewis this summer, and the Iraq war vet who killed himself and wife in Washington state less than a month ago.

This is not just consistent for our recent wars but even wars of past Last month in the UK and American Vietnam veteran killed his boss and tried to kill three others in a “Reservoir Dogs style attack”. We have known for years that domestic violence has been on the rise for war veterans as well as the extent to which PTSD has been occurring as well however, what do we do nothing, and act like nothing is going on or worse as if it is not a serious problem that needs to be addressed. All we do is turn our backs, watch football, and decide what clubs we going to go too while these folks come back here in states of anger and rage we will never comprehend.

Most of us know a war is going on but are with drawn and only show passion if any in the form of political discourse. The truth is that we are removed otherwise, far removed and live our lives the way we would if a war was going on or not. It is like the military is involved, engaged and fighting the war by themselves because the general public goes around as if we don’t care. We don’t even feel the impact of the war for the only ones that really do either are fighting it nor have family members fighting in it. And just imagine how that makes veterans returning home feel?

As a scientist, I know first hand that we aint doing our part. I mean there is no research available nor being conducted to discern the impact of multiple tours and their effect on behavior; or how many tours are too much before a person evinces serious problem behavioral outcomes; or how effective are the evaluation measures we use to suppurate data from veterans returning home; or how well (if at all) are the programs we use to re-integrate veterans are? Ask this as a scientist for I see the same thing in the field of my specialty which is working with infectious disease and mental health outcomes among correctional populations. The goals of my confederates and me are to re-integrate inmates successfully, reduce mental health and infectious disease outcomes as well as keep them from returning back to prison.

We have found that there are different approaches that work for different inmate/correctional populations and worse, there exist no standard protocols for program implementation for inmates and vary from state to state. We need to support research and encourage research for the purpose of dealing with the behavioral health outcomes of military populations. I say this as a scientist; for it seems we are doping nothing and worse do not know what is required or needed; what works and what doesn’t.

What ever the case we need some answers and some answers fast. These folks are used to solving problems by killing - killing is all they know. Otherwise it will only get worse and Major Malik Nadal Hasan, MD wont be the last. It all reminds me of “Five nights of bleeding” by Linton Kwesi Johnson- especially the lyrics there is “war amongs' the rebels, madness, madness, war,