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The Process(ing) of War: Creative Public Spaces for Veteran Storytelling and Reintegration
"Community members -- professionals and laymen of every skill set and sort -- are finding ways to help veterans process their experiences of combat while supporting their move from military life back into the civilian stream. Educational institutions, in particular, are finding interesting ways of engaging on the issue and creating spaces for these necessary reflections. "
Update on OEF/OIF Veterans' Mental Health, VA Benefit Issues
Building upon some of the data-rich news clips shared earlier this week, a few more grafs to consider.
San Jose Mercury News | Returning veterans now battling at home
As of 2007, the Military Health System had recorded 43,779 patients with traumatic brain injuries from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It had recorded 39,365 patients with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, according to a Department of Defense report to Congress.
By the end of September 2008, the number of patients with a preliminary diagnosis of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder from Veterans Affairs doctors had risen to 101,882 — more than 10 percent of veterans who have left the military and more than 20 percent of those who have gone to Veterans Affairs for medical treatment, according to a spokeswoman for Veterans Affairs.
GOOD | The Memory War
We might be on our way out of Iraq but things are just starting to pick up in Afghanistan. With record-high number of veteran suicides and rising rates of post-traumatic stress disorder and clinical depression in every branch of the armed forces, is the nation headed for a mental-healthcare crisis?
Pentagon to phase out unpopular 'stop-loss' program - CNN.com
The military will phase out its "stop-loss" program, the contentious practice of holding troops beyond the end of their enlistments, for all but extraordinary situations, Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced Wednesday. Instead, the military will use incentives programs to encourage personnel to extend their service. Starting this month, the department will provide "special compensation of $500 per month" to troops whose tour has been extended, Gates said. "This special compensation will be applied retroactively to October 1, 2008, the date when Congress first made it available."
The Providence Journal | Afghanistan battle haunts Rhode Islander Craig Mullaney
Deploying to Afghanistan, Craig Mullaney writes, “was a slow immersion, like Dante’s descent into the Inferno.”
One moment, Mullaney and his Army Ranger platoon waited in an airport terminal at Fort Drum, N.Y. Televisions were tuned to Major League Baseball games. The soldiers ate what one jokingly called their “Last Supper” — rubbery T-bone steaks with Mexican rice.
They received an intelligence briefing warning them of the dangers awaiting them in Afghanistan, including ticks, cobras and camel spiders that can run more than 30 mph. Then they marched onto a cavernous cargo plane. Two flights and 7,000 miles later, Mullaney and his men stepped out into the dusty, baking heat of an airbase in Kandahar. It was 128 degrees, in the shade.
In that summer of 2003, Afghanistan had fallen off the front page. Attention had shifted to the war in Iraq. Meanwhile, the Taliban regime that had been toppled by the U.S. invasion following 9/11 was resurgent. Operating from across the border in Pakistan, where Osama bin Laden was suspected to be hiding, Taliban and al-Qaida fighters harassed local villages and Western occupiers.
Mullaney’s Army Ranger training did not cover desert warfare, which had been dropped in 1995. Studying modern military history at West Point, he took just one paragraph of notes on Afghanistan, involving the Russians’ failed experience there in the 1980s.
Incalculable pain - Salon
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Pentagon casualty
reports
show 2,390 service members dead from Iraq and Afghanistan and over 16,000 wounded. By far the vast majority of
the wounded and dead are from Iraq.
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But by Dec. 8, 2005, the military had evacuated another 25,289 service members from Iraq and Afghanistan
for injuries or illnesses not caused directly by enemy bullets or bombs, according to the U.S. Transportation
Command.
Stars & Stripes
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alcohol misuse rise from 13 percent among
soldiers to 21 percent one year after returning from Iraq and Afghanistan,
underscoring the continuing stress of deployment for some troops.
edmontonsun.com - Alberta - War may hit home harder
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Vancouver-based Dr. Greg Passey, who diagnosed a local soldier with PTSD in 2001 and served 22 years in the military himself, said he expects 12% to 24% of Afghanistan vets to suffer lingering psychological effects from what they've seen.
Cost of Iraq war could surpass $1 trillion - Martin Wolk: Eye on the Economy - MSNBC.com
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The most current estimates of the war's cost generally start with figures from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, which as of January 2006 counted $323 billion in expenditures for the war on terrorism, including military action in Iraq and Afghanistan.
E-Notes: Toward a New Conception of the Citizen Soldier - FPRI
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Army Reserve and the Army National Guard, by far the largest of the reserve components (RC) and the forces experiencing the greatest difficulties. As of this writing (January, 2005), RC make up some 40 percent of the military in Operation Iraqi Freedom. Among the Army dead in OIF, about a quarter have been from reserve components.
National Initiatives: Operation Homecoming - Sample Submissions
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As of February 1, 2005, more than 800 submissions have been made to Operation
Homecoming by military personnel, their immediate adult family members,
and other eligible program participants. The National Endowment for the
Arts is pleased to present representative submissions in various genres
to demonstrate the nature and quality of their writing.
War experiences to be detailed at Encinitas reading | The San Diego Union-Tribune
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“I think this book will be the book of a generation,” said Jon Peede, director for Operation Homecoming, a National Endowment for the Arts program aimed at getting U.S. troops and their families to write about their war experiences.
SignOnSanDiego > News > North County > Logan Jenkins -- Ready handkerchiefs for collection of writings on war
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These hundred or so personal narratives, e-mails, poems and short stories are the distilled result of some 50 workshops conducted by authors the likes of Mark Bowden (“Black Hawk Down”), Tom Clancy (“Clear and Present Danger”), Victor Davis Hanson (“Why the West Has Won”), Bobbie Ann Mason (“In Country”), Tobias Wolff (“In Pharaoh's Army”) and editor Andrew Carroll (“War Letters”), who edited “Operation Homecoming.”
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