Chandler brings resilience, accountability message to Fort Hood

Everyone has that one buzz word that can send their blood pressure up in a nanosecond. For me, that word is "resilience" because I believe it is more responsible for military suicides than anything else. It is almost as if they do not understand what that word even means while they produce program after program using it. There are over 900 Suicides Prevention Programs all based on this "abhorrent" approach.

This is from my book, THE WARRIOR SAW, SUICIDES AFTER WAR

The program was designed for school age children and the creator didn’t think there was a single reason it wouldn’t work on the military. Experts started to line up and explain that to put a “program” into this kind of setting without being tested were not justified to justify the Army program.

Bryant Welch was a bit harsher but closer to telling the truth about what many experts had confirmed in a nicer way.

“They had schoolchildren, each night, write down three positive things about themselves. And then they noticed in a follow-up study that those children felt better about themselves. But to go from that to saying that we can have a soldier in a foxhole who says positive things about himself and follows the precepts of this program, is going to watch his buddy blown to smithereens and spend four tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan and come out feeling better about himself, there is a shallowness to the assessment that, from my vantage point, I find abhorrent.”

DR. BESSEL VAN DER KOLK, Boston University School of Medicine: “It doesn't make sense from a neuroscience point of view, because -- and what all of our research shows is that trauma affects cognition. And the very piece that you need to think clearly and to be optimistic gets severely impacted by being traumatized. So, traumatized people cannot think straight because their brains are sort of locked in horror and terror.”

“Recently, the Army released an evaluation of the program, which said, in part, "There is now sound scientific evidence that Comprehensive Soldier Fitness improves the resilience and psychological health of soldiers.” But there is disagreement over that statement in psychiatric circles from doctors and Ph.D.s who say the evaluation is flawed and doesn't prove anything. Meanwhile, the Air Force is in the process of implementing its own version of the program.” (Army Program Aims to Build Troops Mental resilience to Stress, PBS News Hour, Judy Woodruff, December 14, 2011)

That word does not make them unbreakable and as for being resilient, they were long before the military got their hands on them. It takes a special person to be willing to go through what they do for the sake of someone else. Think about it. Would you go through job training the way they do? Leave your family and friends behind for some other country? Would you be willing to go through what they do while deployed? This isn't even addressing the risks of combat itself. They were resilient already. What they were not capable of is being machines. The fact they actually push past all of it until the members of their unit are all home safely is a testament to how resilient they truly are but that has more to do with them and less about the brainwashing the military did to them.

When I read the following headline, it felt as if my brain was going to explode. I am grateful the word was used without being tied to this program. Chandler talked more about military sexual assaults and being accountable than what I thought this was going to be all about.

Chandler brings resilience, accountability message to Fort Hood Soldiers, civilians
May 31, 2013
Army
By Sgt. Ken Scar, 7th Mobile
Public Affairs Detachment

FORT HOOD, Texas (May 31, 2013) -- Sgt. Maj. of the Army Raymond F. Chandler III spent three days here this week, and managed to cover a good portion of the largest military installation in the country during that time.

"I came to Fort Hood to meet with Soldiers and their families, talk to leadership, and see what's going on at the 'Great Place,'" he said, noting he has been stationed here a few times in his military career.

"It was important for me to come down and listen to what Soldiers have on their minds, and deliver some messages from the Army leadership about where we are, where we're going, and what we need to focus on."

Chandler's busy schedule took him from one event to the next nonstop, from a Memorial Day commemoration in Georgetown, Texas, to a 2nd Battalion, 8th Cavalry Regiment tank range, to assemblies, meals and functions in dining facilities and meeting rooms.

Along the way, he had positive things to say about the Soldiers he met.

"If you think about it, most of these young men and women came in the Army after 9/11," he said. "They volunteered to serve their nation in a time of war, knowing they were probably going to be deployed in harm's way. I came in the Army in 1981, during the Cold War. We mostly did training. I'm not sure, if I was 18 again, if I would choose to join the service knowing that."

"All of the services add up to about 3.1 million people," he noted. "There are about 330 million people in our country. You got the top one percent of the American people out here doing amazing things each and every day. If you can't get excited by that, I don't know what's going to get you motivated."

"What I want to relay to every Soldier is that it's preventable," he continued. "If we choose to be professionals, who are engaged with each other, if we're a person of character willing to do what's supposed to be done even when no one is looking, if we're committed to each other and our Army, then we'll be successful in preventing sexual assault from happening. It's not someone else's problem. It's an Army problem."
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