It's certainly planned, inadvertently ironic, that President Barack Obama chose the 2nd anniversary of the end of the Iraq War to visit Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, to announce an executive order expanding suicide prevention and substance abuse services for veterans.
Jay Carney, White House press secretary, said to reporters aboard Air Force One that the executive order focuses on the "unseen wounds of war."
The Washington Post's Amy Gardner reports that Carney said the focus on "unseen wounds" includes mental-health conditions, such as Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), Post Traumatic Stress (PTS), and is the latest evidence Obama is fulfilling that promise.
“We can’t forget,” Carney told reporters, including Gardner. “This country has been engaged in military conflict now for more than 10 years abroad since our first forces went into Afghanistan after Sept. 11, 2001. A tremendous number of men and women have served in those two countries.”
Needless to say, this appears to be a Band-Aid on, and distraction from the failed war in Afghanistan. Obama's foreign policy has done nothing but make combat operations a bit more messy in the restive country — a move emphasized by the fact that American KIA's in Afghanistan essentially doubled, from 1000 to 2000, over the last 27 months of Obama's presidency.
If the war is what causes the wounds, ending it might be the best form of "prevention." Instead, Obama plans to expand personnel in the Veterans Association, an already convoluted, bureaucratic mess, that can't seem to get out of its own way.
The same VA that messed up GI-Bill payments in Ohio, prompting military leaders to "encourage" colleges to matriculate veteran students who have insufficient funds, and the same VA which spent millions on a conference, including $52,000 on a video, while veterans toil and navigate through complex phone corridors in an attempt to receive their benefits.
That's the VA which is essential to Obama's new "initiative" to stem the incredible rise of suicides in the military. Suicides due largely to combat stress, brought about by multiple deployments.
By the end of last year, there were 125,000 vets in the Army alone who had deployed three or more times, and to make matters worse, in wars increasingly viewed as illegitimate and pointless.
Under these conditions, even one deployment can be enough.
This executive order is largely just a band aid, Mr. President, the damage has already been done.
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