Suicide by Rental Truck: America Gets Another Violent Wake-Up Call From Vets in Distress

Two horrific acts of terrorism from Army veterans have offer a grim reminder of the lingering scars from the Forever Wars.

 These scars are well documented in Touching the Dragon, a 2018 memoir by former Navy SEAL James Hatch. A survivor of 150 combat missions, Hatch returned home in bad mental and physical shape; in fact, his crippling wounds of war ended his career. Then, adding insult to injury, he was “forced to … reintegrate into a society that I had spent two decades defending, but in which I didn’t feel I had a place.” In his insightful and prophetic book, Hatch warned that his generational cohort of “special operators,” who experienced a similar “volume of fighting,” were now facing “a serious volume of aftermath. Marriages falling apart. Alcoholism. Guys getting kicked out of their houses. Guys drowning in opioids. The real recoil hasn’t even hit yet.” In a new piece for The American Prospect, VHPI Senior Policy Analyst Suzanne Gordon and Steve Early dig into Hatch's book, the recent events, and the mental and physical health crises afflicting many post-9/11 veterans. "Without a high-functioning health care system of their own, too many former soldiers will be left to carry that burden themselves," the two conclude. "If they crack under the strain of doing so, the consequences can be devastating—not only for their friends, family members, and former comrades, but for everyone else in a small community or a big city." Read their piece here.