Crisis of veterans’ suicides is too often ignored

Crisis of veterans’ suicides is too often ignored
Boston Globe
By Kevin Cullen
GLOBE COLUMNIST
MAY 06, 2014

I’m guessing that you and I know far more than we ever needed to know about the moronic billionaire who, for the time being, still owns the Los Angeles Clippers.

Meanwhile, Benghazi’s back. As if it ever went away. With Hillary Clinton eyeing the White House, Republicans will be shouting “Benghazi!” the next two years.

When the media and politicians get their teeth into something, it’s hard to break the grip.

So why won’t they sink their teeth into something more important than the controversy du jour?

The Veterans Administration says 22 veterans kill themselves every day.

Think about it. In March, not a single American service member was killed in action in Afghanistan or Iraq. But during that month, almost 700 veterans committed suicide.

The silence is deafening.

Dan Magoon, a Boston firefighter and Army vet who heads the Massachusetts Fallen Heroes Memorial Fund, has a theory. “It’s that 1 percent thing,” he said.

During a decade of war, 1 percent of Americans put themselves in harm’s way. The wars have been out of sight, out of mind, and so have those who fought them.

Many politicians are quick to send young people to war. They are less quick to help those who come back with the invisible wounds of war: traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress.
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