Time for Oregon to step up for returning vets

Time for Oregon to step up for returning vets
By The Oregonian Editorial Board
April 07, 2010, 5:10PMOne thing about sending soldiers to war repeatedly for more than six years is that you learn a few things about bringing them home. Oregon will need all that experience and more beginning this month, as it re-absorbs some 2,700 soldiers of the Oregon National Guard's 41st Brigade who have spent most of the last year in Iraq.

This represents the state's biggest single contribution to a war effort in 60 years, so the effort to reintegrate the brigade into Oregon's civilian life must reach into every corner of the state and extend for months -- even years.

Some needs are pressing and immediate. Veterans advocates working on the reintegration campaign they're calling "Fort Oregon" now say they believe that fully half of the soldiers in the brigade are unemployed and will need to start collecting civilian paychecks quickly. For those soldiers, the Guard is trying to assemble potential employers -- a more difficult job than usual at a time of double-digit unemployment.

And yet, they are the lucky ones. Military leadership and civilian veterans advocates are horrified by the rate of suicide among military personnel and officers. At least 301 active-duty military personnel killed themselves last year, more than were killed by other causes in Iraq or Afghanistan. It's not certain how many recent veterans took their own lives. Oregon must be prepared to think that, in every community in the state, a veteran might be lying awake, feeling unmoored, unappreciated, angry or all three.
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Time for Oregon to step up for returning vets