Soldier Suicide as Political Statement Essay -- Politics Army War Essa

Soldier Suicide as Political averment At least twenty-nine U.S. soldiers stationed in Iraq and Kuwait committed self-annihilation between March 2003 and March 2004. Even the Pentagon considers this an alarmingly high felo-de-se rate. It lead the armed forces to commission a morale poll to be completed by Stars & Stripes (August 2003) and to send in a finicky mental health advisory team to assess the situation. In April 2004, legions officials reported the teams conclusion while the suicide rate for soldiers overseas is almost double that of the civilian population, is not considered a crisis. (1) Perhaps these suicides tell us more about how the implementation of democracy and freedom in Iraq is termination than we learn from other (government sanctioned) reports. What qualification we gain if we considered suicide, however tentatively, as a kind of an achievement, even... as a kind of gift... not the one we might have wished for, but the one they give us when t hey do not have anything to give, writes Peggy Phelan, A more expansive consideration of suicide might help be an intervention into the usual story of shame, failure, and anguish that all too ofttimes dominates the relationship of the living with those who kill themselves. (2) Let us listen to the self-inflicted deaths of U.S. soldiers in Iraq as statements of resistance that highlight problems with the United States all volunteer military system. Many soldiers (particularly members of the Reserves and National Guard) are driven to enlist for pecuniary/economic reasons. Faced with limited options, they may have purposefully kept at bay any serious consideration of the possibilities of combat so that they would be able to sign on. These soldier... ...nic dimensions of those inequities. When one considers that for many members of our volunteer army, their finale to enlist was made because it was one of their only options for stability, employment, college funding, citizen ship... supporting our troops takes on different meaning. Soldiers in Iraq who took their own lives are calling out to the wider residential district to investigate why so many find themselves in a situation where death is their most empowered choice. Works Cited1 Statistics compiled from nine-fold news sources listed in the Media Analysis section that follows.2 p.6-7, 24, Peggy Phelan, Francesca Woodmans Photography finis and the Image One More Time, Signs Journal of Women in Culture and corporation , vol. 27, no. 4, The University of Chicago, 2002. 3 Stanley Aronowitz, Curb Your Enthusiasm, First of the Month , Winter 2004.