Iraq Archives - Ramblin' with Roger

Memorial Day: the cost of war

improving coping and problem-solving skills

Perusing a Wikipedia page, I was struck by the cost of war. “Note: ‘Deaths – other’ includes all non-combat deaths, including those from bombing, massacres, disease, suicide, and murder.”

Why I was looking at them is simple. Some people – OK, many people – conflate Memorial Day Day and Veterans Day.

“Memorial Day, which is observed on the last Monday of May, commemorates the men and women who died while in the military service. In observance of the holiday, many people visit cemeteries and memorials, and volunteers often place American flags on each grave site at national cemeteries. A national moment of remembrance takes place at 3:00 p.m. local time.”

What? Nothing about the “unofficial start of summer”?

Veterans Day was formerly known as Armistice Day. November 11th is a day to honor American veterans of all wars.

In all major American wars through World War I, more people died from “other” than from combat. An article in Military.com notes: “The chances of dying in combat in the Revolutionary War were roughly 1.8%. But “disease was a much deadlier enemy than the British troops… you still had a 4.5% chance of dying from dysentery, malaria, or smallpox.” And “a Great War-era soldier was almost as likely to perish due to trench foot or Spanish Flu as to a German bullet.”

Not painless

I wonder how many of these fighters died from suicide? An article in the Military Suicide Research Consortium notes: “During the final three years of World War II, the Army’s annual suicide rate didn’t budge above 10 soldiers per 100,000, and during the Korean War in the early 1950s, that annual pace remained at about 11 soldiers per 100,000, according to a study published in 1985 by the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research…

“The Army’s suicide rate in 2001 was less than half that for all American males (18.2 per 100,000). Since then, the pace of self-harm among active Army troops has more than doubled…”

A 2021 paper from the Watson Institute of Brown University cites these startling statistics.

“Suicide rates among active military personnel and veterans of the post-9/11 wars are reaching new peaks… The study finds that at least four times as many active duty personnel and war veterans of post-9/11 conflicts have died of suicide than in combat, as an estimated 30,177 have died by suicide as compared with the 7,057 killed in post-9/11 war operations.” A 2022 report suggests nearly 17 vets commit suicide each day.

Help

A 2021 Fact Sheet from the White House outlines Five Priorities for Reducing Military and Veteran Suicide. One piece notes that “reducing the likelihood that an individual will experience a suicidal crisis requires addressing the factors—such as increased financial strain, lack of housing, food insecurity, unemployment, and legal issues—that may contribute to or increase the risk for suicide. Conversely, improving coping and problem-solving skills and supporting connectedness are protective factors that can decrease risk.”

Sending people off to war means doing all one can to prevent them from dying prematurely on the battlefield or when they get home.

I found a 2019 video memorial to U.S. soldiers killed in the War on Terror. It’s called The Cost Of War.

See also: Heroes, Monsters, and Boys at Omaha Beach on Medium

Fellow Pisces, friend Mark

comic books

There are very few people for whom I can tell you the date we met. Friend Mark is one of them.

On Sunday, September 12, 1971, my parents dropped me off at the State University College at New Paltz (NY). There was a meal in the basement of Bliss Hall, and I met Mark while standing in line.

We discovered we were both staying at Scudder Hall, he in 110, me in B2. We hung out in each other’s room a lot that year. He would perch on his desk like Snoopy sometimes did on his doghouse, looking like a vulture.

The next night at a mixer, he introduced me to his high school friend, the Okie, who I would marry.

I discovered he collected comic books. For a time, I thought this was strange, but eventually, I started buying my own at the convenience store in nearby Highland. Eventually, we frequented the Crystal Cave, an actual comic book store in downtown New Paltz, where we met future FantaCo dudes Raoul Vezina and Tom Skulan.

In the spring and fall of 1972, he and I went to several antiwar demonstrations in New Paltz, Poughkeepsie, Kingston, and New York City. He was part of the auto brigade that tried to block the New York State Thruway; I was in his car. He was present when I got arrested in May.

At least once, he tried to teach me to drive on that same Thruway stretch between New Paltz and Kingston, but he said it was a terrifying experience.

SPAC

He and his then-girlfriend MK52 were in the car on August 22, 1974, when the Okie, by then my wife, chastised me for the 110 miles (177 km) from New Paltz to the Saratoga Performing Arts Center when we were going to see Joni Mitchell.

I was the best man at his October 1976 marriage to MK52. When I was adrift in late 1977, I ended up staying at their apartment in Schenectady, NY, from December 1977 to March 1978.

In the early 1980s, Mark worked part-time as a bartender. This helped him to appreciate sports and dance music far more than he did when I first met him.

He, along with his cousin Lawrence, started a Mid-Winter tradition almost every February for decades, usually at Mark’s or his friend Barry’s house. The photo is from an event a few years ago. I’ve been to at least two dozen of them over the years.

Mark was a groomsman in my final marriage in May 1999, despite hating wearing a tux. For the record, he looked nice.

In the buildup to the Iraq war, there were massive antiwar demonstrations in over 600 cities all over the world on February 15, 2003. I came down on a bus from Albany to New York City, where between 100,000 and 500,000 people showed up. Somehow, I ran into Mark and his child, who had come down from the Mid-Hudson.

Friend Mark and I see each other regularly; generally, he drives up to Albany from the Mid-Hudson. We talk and solve the problems of the world in a few hours.

There’s undoubtedly other stuff I’ve either forgotten or do not wish to incriminate one or both of us.

Am I more or less political?

rallies

Someone I knew peripherally three decades ago I got to know much better in 2021. They said he thought I was less political now than I was back in the day. I’m not quite sure about the definition of the word in this context. This, of course, got me thinking about my love/hate thing with all things involving politics.

I grew up in the 1960s and went to some civil rights actions. But from 1968 through 1974 I was more involved in opposition to the war in Vietnam, even getting arrested in 1972.

Meanwhile, I went to college in New Paltz in 1971. I was a political science major, so I’ve always paid attention to politics, sometimes with stunned disbelief. I joined the New Paltz Democratic Club c. 1973. There was an open seat in the U.S. House of Representatives for the massive reapportioned district of Howard Robison (R-Owego). I described my petitioning here.

I carried petitions again in 1980 for a guy running against a solid incumbent in Albany, which was almost impossible. And I was involved in some social justice activities. I know I went to the anti-nuke rally in June 1982 in NYCNY.

During the 1990s, I befriended my city councilperson and carried petitions. Also, I was involved with some anti-racism activities.

For the six months prior to the water in Iraq in March 2003, I participated in more than two dozen protests, including the big one on 15 February 2003.

Later that decade, I carried petitions for someone I had known for over 25 years. Did I mention that I really HATE carrying petitions, yet I’ve done it at least four times?

Since then, my public participation has been spotty. A rally for freeing falsely imprisoned persons here, a women’s empowerment march there. My daughter was heavily involved in Black Lives Matter rallies in 2020; I went to one, on Juneteenth.

But I do write about it, sometimes

I don’t know if blogging about inequity is DOING anything about it. Regardless, almost every January 15 and April 4 in the past decade, I’ve written about some of the less familiar works of MLK Jr. or tried to recontextualize Martin for the 21st century.

During the orange years, going back at least to 2015, I wrote about him. A LOT, actually, more often than I wanted to because he was so toxic. If you go to my blog and search for trump, you’ll see I probably wrote about him at least 400 times, such as here and here and here and here and here. And those are just some of the ones for 2016. Frankly, I grew tired of even thinking about him. But the process was cathartic, at least for me.

And occasionally, I’ve addressed a wide range of issues from global warming to voting rights.

I write about politics less so now because it’s a more normal, albeit dysfunctional time, your usual sausage-making. But just this summer, I got to suggest to my mayor, who knows me by name, to check out this video about inequality.

So I still pay attention, reading scads of information from differing POVs. If I have something to say, I have the pulpit of my own design. But I’ve never been that motivated to write/talk about politics all the time.