Time has come to change policy on condolence letters for suicides

If you have read this blog, even for just this year, you've read enough heartbreaking stories of the men and women dying after surviving combat. For anyone to even suggest suicides would have happened without being deployed, does not understand the difference between a civilian and the kind of person willing to die for this country. Think about it. They face death on a daily basis in combat, most of the time deploying more than once, yet live through it. When they are out of danger from bullets and bombs, they are still in danger because of what happened.

Is this a grateful nation or not? Do we limit the point of it because they took their own lives? If you think we should then you have not considered why they would live through all of it and then not be able to live through surviving it. While there are suicides while on deployments, most of them happen when they are back here. The time to change this policy is right here and right now.

Senators Call on President to Change Condolence Letter Policy for Military Suicide Victims
Published May 25, 2011
FoxNews.com

A group of senators have asked President Obama to start sending condolence letters to families of U.S. service members who kill themselves, in what would be a reversal of long-standing policy.

Sens. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and Richard Burr, R-N.C., co-chairs of the Senate Military Family Caucus, along with nine Democratic senators on Wednesday signed a letter to Obama asking him to end what they say is an "insensitive" practice.

"As you well know, the incidence of suicide among our service men and women has reached epidemic levels due to the stresses of nearly 10 years of continuous combat operations," the letter reads.

"While we appreciate that your administration initiated a review of this policy in December 2009, we understand that this review has yet to be completed. It is long past time to overturn this hurtful policy," they wrote.

More than 1,100 members of the Armed Forces killed themselves between 2005-2009, according to an August 2010 report by a task force assigned to look at suicide prevention among military members.

Read more: Condolence Letter Policy for Military Suicide Victims