<story><title>The final, anguished years of a warrior-scholar who exposed torture by US troops</title><url>https://www.npr.org/2021/12/02/1060884859/the-final-anguished-years-of-a-warrior-scholar-who-exposed-torture-by-u-s-troops</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>leroy_masochist</author><text>RIP. Some ugly truths are surfaced by the case of Major Fishback:&lt;p&gt;- People who are motivated to do hard things like go to West Point and SFAS sometimes have mental health issues; anecdotally, would say maybe even at a higher rate than the general population&lt;p&gt;- People who have found their &amp;quot;mission in life&amp;quot; often can be pretty abrasive about it, alienating friends and former colleagues -- especially when it&amp;#x27;s a &amp;quot;moral imperative&amp;quot; mission like ending detainee abuse&lt;p&gt;- In the social environment of an infantry platoon and&amp;#x2F;or ODA, contra what they tell you in the officer pipeline, &amp;quot;just doing the right thing&amp;quot; isn&amp;#x27;t enough; you have to do the right thing AND sell your guys on why it&amp;#x27;s the right thing. Fishback clearly failed to do the latter, especially as an ODA commander. Having your guys criticize you as both too timid and too aggressive isn&amp;#x27;t an indictment of their ability to think rationally, it&amp;#x27;s a sign you&amp;#x27;ve lost their trust and confidence&lt;p&gt;- The veteran mental health care system remains generally fucked, largely because the animating force behind the VA is CYA, not a bona fide desire to help patients. If their CYA interests converge with what you need, you&amp;#x27;ll get great care. If not, you can slip through the cracks, as Fishback did&lt;p&gt;- On a related note, veterans can be a difficult bunch and VA mental health people are often overworked and cynical. In the case of someone like Fishback who was in crisis and probably not the easiest person to interact with, it is sad but not surprising that his care team was lackadaisical about following up and getting him the care he needed</text></comment>
<story><title>The final, anguished years of a warrior-scholar who exposed torture by US troops</title><url>https://www.npr.org/2021/12/02/1060884859/the-final-anguished-years-of-a-warrior-scholar-who-exposed-torture-by-u-s-troops</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>tristor</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s not nice to hear, but the reality is, we treat most veterans even worse than this.  The VA is an abysmal failure, and its failure, especially in the arena of mental healthcare, is a primary driving factor why many homeless men in the US are veterans.  Going to war takes a serious and long-lasting toll on a person, and an even deeper toll when you are someone who allows yourself to consider and struggle with the ethics and morals of war.&lt;p&gt;This country needs to wrestle with and resolve its treatment of veterans.  More than any other nation, the United States has been encaptured by the military-industrial complex, and we treat the millions of people who are driven through this complex as less than dirt, discarding them as husks of their former selves without any recourse or support once they no longer serve that complex.  No less a luminary than Eisenhower[1] and Smedley Butler[2] warned us clearly that the military-industrial complex would lead to this, that war is a racket, and that our society was trending in a direction where it was acceptable to utterly destroy the lives of men so that a few may profit.&lt;p&gt;It is very sad that this is the end, at such a young age, of this man.&lt;p&gt;[1]: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.npr.org&amp;#x2F;2011&amp;#x2F;01&amp;#x2F;17&amp;#x2F;132942244&amp;#x2F;ikes-warning-of-military-expansion-50-years-later&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.npr.org&amp;#x2F;2011&amp;#x2F;01&amp;#x2F;17&amp;#x2F;132942244&amp;#x2F;ikes-warning-of-mil...&lt;/a&gt;
[2]: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;archive.org&amp;#x2F;details&amp;#x2F;War_Is_A_Racket&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;archive.org&amp;#x2F;details&amp;#x2F;War_Is_A_Racket&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>