Canada has only recently, and only dimly, become aware of the terrible toll that our ill-informed participation in the Afghanistan war has taken on the service personnel who risked their lives over there.
Look at the asinine statements coming from the top brass and the Minister of Defense, who offers his "hopes and prayers."
Hopes and prayers are not enough.
Contrary to what the Minister and the top brass claim, there is an abundance of evidence pointing to the fact that those veterans who admit to suffering PTSD are cashiered out of the Canadian Forces ASAP.
You wouldn't want a few bad apples spoiling the whole bushel, now would you?
The problem is not unique to Canadian veterans. Soldier suicides have long made headlines in the UK.
In the US, suicides among servicemen and women have been acknowledged as a veritable epidemic.
There was one sure-fire way we could have avoided these suicides; we could have chosen not to participate in the Afghan war in the first place.
It's obviously too late to do that, but we can still do the right thing by the men and women who were sent over there so that Ottawa's leadership class could score brownie points in Washington, and every sentient Canadian knows that was all Afghanistan was ever about.
Defense Minister Rob Nicholson needs to resign. The brass who are hassling PTSD vets out of the service need to be fired. The veterans themselves need to have every resource made available to make their lives livable again.
Anything less is shameful.
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