I’m a pacifist, but I’m wearing a red poppy to support Canadian Veterans this month. When a nation sends it’s young adults to war, it has a moral obligation to take care of them if they return alive. That means physical AND psychological care. On any given night in the United STates, 131,000 veterans are sleeping on the streets. 1 in 3 homeless men in the US is a veteran. It’s time to end the cycle of physical and psychological violence, beginning in Afghanistan and Iraq and ending in our front yards.
It’s also time to account for the real casualty statistics of these unjust wars. There are those who fall to battle and friendly fire. And then there are those who fall to negligence:
The debilitating effects of psychological trauma can lead troops and veterans into a downward spiral of drug and alcohol abuse, homelessness, anger issues, failed marriages and eventually suicide, he explained, noting that more veterans have committed suicide since 2001 than the number of servicemembers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan over that period.
via DefenseLink News Article: Shinseki Cites Collaboration in Mental Health Care.
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