Iraq and Afghanistan Are Different from Our Vietnam Vets

There is so much wrong with this it's hard to know where to begin.

Belleruth Naparstek
Psychotherapist, Author, Guided Imagery Innovator
Posted: February 4, 2010
Returning Troops from Iraq and Afghanistan Are Different from Our Vietnam Vets
I was talking recently with some V.A. colleagues, who were telling me how the new vets coming back from Iraq & Afghanistan are very different from the Vietnam vets they saw decades ago.

Of course, it's a different situation in many ways. With Vietnam, the country was totally divided about the war, and we took our anger out on each other, and on the troops we sent out to fight. They in turn were furious about being told to kill people and then getting castigated for it when they got home. We traumatized them all over again.
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Iraq and Afghanistan Are Different from Our Vietnam Vets

We could begin here with the fact that there was much known about PTSD but it was called "shell shock" and it was known to be part of war. There were reports and even a few movies about it well before Vietnam. While it is true because of Vietnam veterans coming back, pushing for research and compensation, many of the mental health developments were directly related to Vietnam.

Also, back in the 60's, we didn't know a whole lot about PTSD and our troops didn't know what was happening to them. Based on what we understood from World War II, we tried to prevent them getting PTSD by limiting their time of service to a year (for Marines, it was 15 months). And, sure enough, they came back with a smaller incidence of posttraumatic stress. But 2-3 years later, lo and behold, they developed delayed onset PTSD and the percentages were right back to being the same as WWII - somewhere between 22%-35%.

Marines had to be better so instead of one year, they went thirteen months.

Vietnam Dustoff and Dinh Nit : Veterans Today
Jun 12, 2009 ... The tour in Vietnam lasted 12 months for everyone except the Marines who continued the Corps' normal 13-month overseas tour.

The other wrong part is the number of drafted, which happened in other wars besides Vietnam.

Of course, most of our Vietnam troops were draftees. Nowadays we have an all-volunteer army. They can at least feel it was their decision to be there, and that sense of self-efficacy might add to some emotional resilience. (But then again, a lot of the reservists and National Guardsmen thought they were signing up to get some extra money and help out with a few national emergencies. Little did they know they'd be sent away from their families and careers for months on end, perhaps on their fourth or fifth rotation, fighting real people on foreign soil. So this is a complicated point and not as straightforward as it looks.)

Historical Facts
The last man to be drafted was in June 1973.
Number of Drafted for WWI : 2.8 million
Number of Drafted for WWII: 10 million
Number of Drafted for the Korean War: 1.5 million
Number of Drafted for the Vietnam War: 1.8 million
Source: Selective Service System
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1116-01.htm

Personnel
9,087,000 military personnel served on active duty during the Vietnam Era (5 August 1965-7 May 1975)
8,744,000 personnel were on active duty during the war (5 August 1964-28
March 1973)
3,403,100 (including 514,300 offshore) personnel served in the SE Asia
Theater (Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, flight crews based in Thailand and sailors
in adjacent South China Sea waters).
2,594,000 personnel served within the borders of South Vietnam
( I January 1965 - 28 March 1973)
Another 50,000 men served in Vietnam between 1960 and 1964
Of the 2.6 million, between 1 and 1.6 million (40-60%) either fought in
combat, provided close combat support or were at least fairly regularly
exposed to enemy attack.
7,484 women served in Vietnam, of whom 6,250 or 83.5% were nurses.
Peak troop strength in Vietnam was 543,482, on 30 April 1969.
http://www.mrfa.org/vnstats.htm

When people try to compare the newer wars to wars of the past, there is a lot that goes into it that cannot be dismissed.

The survival rate for Iraq and Afghanistan veterans is a lot higher than during Vietnam. They are surviving horrific wounds, so instead of dying in combat, they need help recovering from it. With a catastrophic wound, there is the assumption of the need for mental health help. Yet when someone else witnesses the event, there had not been the same assumption of needing help to recover from what they saw.

Redeployments increase the risk of PTSD and the Army knew this years ago but they redeployed them anyway. Vietnam veterans knew if they made it to DEROS, they didn't have to go back again, but some did. For Iraq and Afghanistan veterans they know they can go back over and over again with very little time between deployments to recover. While most discover they need help to recover from the deployment they survived, they are back in training to be redeployed again. They are deployed on medication and no therapy. This is another practice that is more harmful than good. The Hartford Courant broke this story with Zoloft and A Rifle.

Potent Mixture: Zoloft & A Rifle - Courant.com
May 16, 2006

Yet they are still doing it.

As bad as it was for Vietnam veterans trying to recover from what was asked of them, for the Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, it will be much worse, with higher numbers, simply because too few have been willing to go and too much is asked of those who did.

Does it matter to them that we support them no matter how we feel about the wars? Not really when they come home and no one wants to talk to them about any of it. Not really when they come home and they are without the help they need.
Not really when their families still have no clue what PTSD is or what they can do to help their own family member heal.
Not really when we manage to show up for a funeral for them but don't manage to show up to listen to them.
Not really when they have to do battle with the VA to have claims approved and we can't even manage to write a letter to our elected to protest this.
Not really when most people in this country are not paying attention to any of this.

While a lot of this article was good and worthy of reading, there is too much missed that needs to be addressed.

We should really begin with what the Vietnam veterans managed to do no matter what they faced when they came home and know what it took for them to do it. We showed them we didn't care about them but they never gave up on us. They wouldn't have fought so hard to be taken care of if they didn't trust us with being able and willing to do the right thing. They knew once we were aware of what was happening to them, we'd want to do something and because the Vietnam veterans came home and fought for all of this, the Iraq and Afghansitan veterans have at least more help than the Vietnam veterans hoped for.