"We are not victims, but some of us might need some help"

There are so many good points in this that it is hard to know what to spotlight. Lt. Col. Robert Bateman is right about political sides. Democrats want to just blame Bush and Republicans want to blame Obama. Nothing really new there and nothing honest about it either. The truth is if anyone had paid attention all along they'd know that the problems veterans face after serving this one nation have never been taken care of properly by either representative of their particular parties.

These men and women have survived what only 7% of the population understands. Don't talk to me about PTSD caused by other events. PTSD is serious no matter what the cause but for average folks like us, we did not willing subject ourselves to the trauma. We did not willingly put our lives in danger. We did not willingly risk them to save anyone else.

Combat PTSD is different from all other causes. The only cause of PTSD close to it is law enforcement followed by firefighting and EMT. They willingly risk their lives as well.

They have placed their lives in danger for others since the country began to fight for freedom and they continued to do it to retain freedom. That same freedom, as this article points out, allows all of us to voice our own thoughts and beliefs as we see fit. However those rights are not taken seriously enough because we fail to learn from the troops ready to die for the sake of someone they do not agree with. We can't even have a discussion with someone on the other side so the Independents are growing in numbers (like me) because politics are not in the proper perspective. Political beliefs do matter to military folks but it is not all that matters to them.

This article is important, as said for many reasons, but if we are ever going to really take care of those in need, we need to understand them. If we are ever really going to appreciate those who served but do not need help, we need to support them so they continue to do what they do for each other, and us, everyday.

Soldiers Are Not Victims
We are not victims, but some of us might need some help
Esquire
By Lt. Col. Robert Bateman
January 16, 2014

One of the difficulties in dealing with issues like military suicides is that, almost instantly, they become politicized. One side or the other wants to use the topic to bash the other side, purely to score political points. Even otherwise well-intentioned people seem to fall into this trap, which says more about American polarization than it does about the needs of members of the military and veterans who have left the service.

I have been writing for more than 20 years. Some guys like to go fishing, others make cabinetry, still others devote their time to cars or sports. My hobby is writing, and it has always proved an entertaining (for me anyway) way to sort through issues. Over these years I have come to recognize a definite pattern in the hate-mail I get. When a republican is in office I often get hate-mail from the Left accusing me of being a, "Jack-booted Fascist Republican Thug." When a democrat is sitting in the Oval Office, the hate mostly comes from the Right, with letters calling me a "Marxist Left-Wing Democratic Traitor." Both sides invariably claim that by writing I am "sucking up to the Administration in order to get a promotion," which is itself amusing. In other words, people paint onto the words they read the political interpretation that they want to believe, sometimes to the exclusion of what was actually written.

Military suicide is another one of those topics that ignites people's passions. Those on the Right are yelling about the current president not doing enough for veterans, while the Left is screaming about the Bush Administration's cuts and lack of an "uplift" to the VA when its policies were in effect and creating a lot more combat veterans. Both sides, more often than not, portray the common military man and woman as "victims" of whichever Administration they do not like. (It's a holdover attitude from the Vietnam era, but one that now spreads across the political spectrum.)

We are not victims.
read why here

I looked up Lt. Col. Robert Bateman online but had to give up around page 17 of the search to find out more about him. All the pages were about gun control slams against him and not about his service or who he was. Does his views on gun rights changed the power of the article? Not for me. I am paying attention to the truth in what he wrote about military suicides and fact that many people in this country fail to see how much different the folks in the military really are.

They say they want to go back to "normal" and fit back in again. The truth is, they never really did fit in and we are lucky they didn't. We don't willingly put ourselves in danger or think that much about someone else. When we do it makes the headlines of the newspapers because heroism is so far out of the ordinary for us, people are shocked. They can't figure out why a hero did this or that for someone else and most of the time, they did it for strangers.

As for "normal" that is debatable. If they want to be a "normal" civilian again, that isn't going to happen. That is why we have Veterans Day and Memorial Day. We don't have "civilian day" for a reason. In the veterans community they are normal and I get to spend my days with them. In the civilian world they are as different as can be and that, that we should all be thankful for.