Twisting Tragedies

I saw this story over at the Washington Post and it concerned me a bit. An increase in suicide rates among soldiers is not to be taken lightly. But then I read what Marc Danziger wrote about it and felt that the subject wasn't as bleak as the headline makes it sound. Before I could post anything, James Joyner addressed it – and between those two excellent treatments about the subject there really is not a lot to add.

Marc Danziger, whose son has recently enlisted in the military, has done some calculations and found that the Army suicide rate, even at this peak, is actually lower than for their civilian cohorts. That’s interesting indeed and speaks to the Army’s vetting process and support system.

Still, the fact that the Army is experiencing a spike in suicides, which seems correlated with deployments to war zones, is naturally disturbing. And it leads Jeralyn Merritt to serve up the Democratic Talking Point of the Day: “I blame President Bush. Every day he keeps our soldiers in this war, more of them are going to die.”

It’s true, of course, that soldiers die in wars. And not simply from combat action but from the added stress, including the effects the deployment has on their personal lives.

When I heard this story on NPR this morning as I was awakening, my initial reaction was that it’s not surprising that it’s been 26 years since the numbers were this high, since that was the last time the Army was engaged in a sustained war. But, of course, my groggy math was off by a decade: 26 years ago from 2006 is 1980, the last year of the Carter administration and a full seven years after our departure from Vietnam. Which means that, despite legitimate concern about suicides rising during this war (see here and here for stories from 2003), the rate was actually lower than it was during the peacetime Army of 1980.

Joyner also has a link to a study about suicide rates that shows that random variation is the likely reason for the uptick.

Every, single one of those suicides is a tragedy, especially for those left behind. It really is beneath anyone to make a political issue of it. Don't inflict more pain on the survivors.