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Ellen Belcher is the Dayton Daily News opinion pages editor. She writes about state government, education, the environment, higher education and all things Dayton.
Martin Gottlieb is an editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News opinion pages. He focuses on the political process itself and does such national issues as war, the economy, taxes and Social Security, as well as a hodge-podge of local and state issues.
Scott Elliott is an editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News opinion pages. He writes about education, city and suburban issues, politics, business, workforce and consumer issues.Home > Blogs > A Matter of Opinion > Archives > 2010 > August > 26
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Editorial: Military suicide rate reflects wars, not Pentagon failure
A Pentagon task force dedicated to deterring military suicides issued its report this week — mainly about all the things the military should be doing to deter suicides. But one member felt obliged to note that the task force had heard from troops who said they almost died of boredom from exposure to regular suicide-deterrence speeches.
Therein lies the problem: It’s not as if the Pentagon has never focused on this problem before.
And yet the military suicide rate has been increasing. In 2007, the number was 224; in 2008, 267; in 2009, 309.
Looking at the Army alone, the rate doubled from 2001 to 2006. (Most suicides are in the Army and Marines.)
From 2001 to the summer of 2009, more soldiers killed themselves than died in Afghanistan in combat.
The numbers take on clearer meaning when you look at specific bases. Fort Campbell, Ky., had 14 suicides in 2009, and 12 and nine in the previous two years.
Comparisons with civilian rates are tricky, because you’d really have to consider war-zone veterans to get a feel for the situation. And civilian rates for the last couple of years aren’t in yet, according to the panel. But the Army, having had a lower rate than the civilian world since Vietnam, recently surpassed the official civilian rate marginally.
Who are the military people committing suicide? A task force member said they break down into three groups: a third are in war zones; a third are back from war zones, and a third haven’t been deployed.
The task force seemed eager to fix the situation. It made 76 proposals. And it did some interesting things, including hearing from a panel of survivors of failed suicide attempts.
But most of its proposals aren’t very interesting. The report calls for a new office in the Pentagon to combat suicide, an increased emphasis on the overall health of troops — physical, emotional and spiritual — and more tolerance for troops who seek psychological help. That sort of thing.
On the last point, the panel said that some troops are badgered and humiliated if they seek help, and it admitted that some feel that seeking help will hurt their careers.
However, one panel member said that a study in the Air Force showed that those seeking help don’t do any worse in their careers than others.
Distressingly, the task force said that it could not develop a profile of a service member likely to commit suicide. Too many different sets of circumstances arise; it’s too complicated.
For a video of the task force presenting and explaining its study, go to www.c-span video.org and search for “military suicide prevention.”
Despite the eagerness of the task force for an enhanced anti-suicide program, those who hear it out might reasonably conclude that the military hasn’t really been doing much wrong, given how much the Pentagon has already been doing and given how undramatic the new proposals are.
The problem is elsewhere: Army Maj. Gen. Philip Volpe, a physician and panel co-chair, said the military has a “supply-and-demand mismatch.” He meant troops are being used too much.
The task force suggests either reducing the number of wars or increasing the number of troops.
Actually, the wisdom of making that choice grows out of any look at the suicide trend line alone.
The current generation of war-fighters is overstretched. These people are paying the price for Washington’s desire to fight current wars as cheaply as possible.
Permalink | Comments (7) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Health Care, Martin Gottlieb, Wright Patterson Air Force Base
TweetEditorial: Ohio shouldn’t let politics take over
Judicial elections in Ohio have an identity crisis.
While the state demands the races remain officially nonpartisan — meaning something like nonpolitical — rivers of special-interest cash flow into judicial contests.
So in a way it’s odd that a federal court blocked a plan that would have allowed Ohio candidates for judge to openly state their party affiliations in political advertising.
After all, a recent study by New York University found Ohio Supreme Court races saw more spending on television ads than any other state from 2000 to 2009. More than $21 million was spent on TV.
Out of more than $29 million spent overall, $7.6 million came from the Ohio and U.S. chambers of commerce.
Besides, judges already go through a partisan process just to get on the ballot. Typically, they seek a political party’s nomination and often face off in a Republican or Democratic primary.
Yet, then, in the general election, those party affiliations are stripped from the ballot.
With that much political activism already going on, there is some sense to the argument that more overtly connecting party labels to candidates’ names can at least help voters get a sense of which interests are aligned with which candidates.
Voters often use party labels to help them identify candidates in low-profile races who match their personal political philosophies. A case can be made that party labels would be a voter service and would increase transparency.
But, at a more fundamental level, this is not the way Ohio should go when it comes to selecting judges. Rather than throw up its collective hands and embrace the total politicization of judicial elections, Ohio ought to instead take a step back and reconsider. There’s a better way.
That’s what the late Thomas Moyer, chief justice of the Ohio Supreme Court, was prodding the state to consider. Justice Moyer, who died in April and had been planning to retire at year’s end, sought to cap his impressive career by capitalizing on the bipartisan respect he had earned to get Ohio’s leaders to consider a new system for selecting judges based on merit rather than by election.
Other states use merit systems much like the one Justice Moyer envisioned. In Iowa, for instance, the governor picks a new judge from a list of three recommended candidates put forward by a panel of lawyers and laymen. After a year on the job, the new judge faces a retention election. The judge’s name appears on the ballot without an opponent. Voters simply chose “yes” to retain or “no” to reject. Retention elections are then held at regular intervals.
Ohio ought to do something like that. But without Justice Moyer, this is a cause without a champion. Even while he was alive, the state Supreme Court was mostly resistant to change. That was no surprise, Justice Moyer said at the time. After all, the electoral system was responsible for placing all of them in their jobs.
But they are themselves diminished by the money-laden, interest-group-dominated process they go through. Their decisions are brought under suspicion.
Judicial independence — and the perception of judicial independence — should prevail. Putting judges on the same ballot as politicians delivers a message. And keeping party labels off the ballot does absolutely nothing to soften the message.
Permalink | Comments (3) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Ohio politics, Scott Elliott
TweetScott Elliott: Airman’s case could break ground for gay civil rights
In his famous “letter from a Birmingham jail” in 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. responded with irritation to calls for him to wait before holding more protests demanding an end to public discrimination.
“This ‘wait’ has always meant ‘never,’” he wrote. “Justice too long delayed is justice denied.”
By filing what could be a groundbreaking lawsuit, Lt. Col. Victor Fehrenbach was saying he could no longer wait for the U.S. Air Force to do the right thing.
An ominous sign came in late July, when Lt. Dan Choi — a gay army National Guardsman in New York and an outspoken critic of the military’s “Don’t ask, don’t tell” rule — got his walking papers.
Fehrenbach, who was born at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and who grew up in Huber Heights, soon learned his own discharge was imminent. So he played his ace.
“They’ve taken everything from me — my job, my pension — everything I’ve lived for but my sense of right and wrong and my honor,” he said in anticipation of being pushed out.
It makes no sense that the military is still discharging soldiers for being gay. The president, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the defense secretary all have said they favor dropping “Don’t ask, don’t tell,” the law that allows gays to be expelled if their sexual preference becomes known. The U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate Armed Services Committee have voted to repeal it. Public opinion polls strongly favor getting rid of it.
All that’s left is for the full Senate to vote, which could come as early as next month. (Ohio Sen. George Voinovich is among a handful of Republican fence-sitters who gay-rights advocates are trying to win over.)
Even if the repeal effort fails, “Don’t ask” could meet its demise in the courts. Other cases have been working their way toward the Supreme Court, but Fehrenbach’s case is viewed as a particularly strong example of discrimination, perhaps a better test case than the others. His lawyers think the case could be seminal.
“We are taking the Air Force somewhere they don’t want to go — acknowledging the law of the land in the ninth district,” said M. Andrew Woodmansee, lead counsel on Fehrenbach’s case.
Utah, where Fehrenbach is stationed, is among the western states under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Court of Appeals of the 9th District, which in 2008 established what is known as the “Witt standard.” In the case of gay Air Force Reservist Maj. Margaret Witt, the court found the military must demonstrate that a gay service member’s presence constitutes a threat to unit readiness or cohesion.
Gay-rights advocates are convinced that cannot be proven, especially given Fehrenbach’s stellar military record. The Iraq and Afghanistan combat veteran and elite aviator was cited for raising morale in his most recent performance review. In the days after the Sept. 11 attacks, he was handpicked for a team that protected the air space over Washington, D.C. It’s not a stretch to call the guy an American hero.
Fehrenbach never had any intention of becoming a gay-rights icon. The Air Force learned he was gay after he was falsely accused of a sexual crime and the police tipped off officers at the base. Fehrenbach did everything he could to get the Air Force not to push for his discharge. Nobody in his unit knew he was gay, so none of the military’s usual justifications for dismissal applied, he argued. How could he be a disruption or harm morale if nobody knew? Instead of backing off, the Air Force blew his cover by moving to dismiss him.
Overt discrimination against gays, through laws like “Don’t ask” or bans on gay marriage, won’t last. It’s just a matter of time. The question is how much time?
Gay civil rights advocates are awaiting a tide-turning court case, one that banishes discrimination in a sweeping way, much as Brown v. Board of Education did for school segregation. Such a decision could accelerate change the way Brown did for black civil rights.
He may have started out simply fighting to keep a job he loves, but Fehrenbach could end up playing a part in hastening the arrival of a world where nobody has to hide who they are in order to live the life they want.
Permalink | Comments (6) | Post your comment | Categories: Civil Rights, Columns, Scott Elliott
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