Is Government the Answer to Military Suicide?

I'm a big believer in doing what can be done to stop suicide, especially among VMGR (Veterans, Military Guard and Reserves). So I feel torn by Iraq/Afghanistan Veterans of America's petition drive to get Congress to "do something" about it. Clearly, there are some actions Congress can take, but I can't believe that America's government is really willing to tackle military suicide at its root cause: war.

Please don't misunderestimate this. Countries of liberty like America need and deserve a strong defense. But the thread that connects that fact to the reality of what America and other liberty-loving nations fear, and how those fears somehow make intervention in so many parts of the world an American problem -- this is not at all clear.

How well would you do your job if you weren't passionate about it? Maybe I'm just unique -- I know many people who slog through a passionless workday because the paycheck somehow makes it worthwhile. From what I know of non-mercenary military paychecks, it's hard to see how money alone can be enough to keep America's service members coming back day after day.

Serving in uniform takes a special kind of commitment; Congress has done what it can to grapple with that fact, but government is just not a capable humanitarian organization. Ask any Veteran trying to get care at a VA Medical Center, or trying to claim rightful benefits for service-connected injuries. The government just doesn't serve its injured warriors well. If government even came close to being effective there wouldn't be a need for the thousands of non-governmental humanitarian organizations serving Veterans much better than government.

So, while I applaud IAVA's initiative, and while such things clearly "call attention" to the poignant problems, it's foolhardy to ask Congress to do any better at solving them. Much more effective would be petitioning Congress to help stop the rudderless worldwide military action that's caused so many military suicides and overloaded the Veterans Administration. Petitioning Congress and the President to let the military do what it does best by  setting a clear military objective and then getting out of its way seems like an effective and reasonable way to exert influence.

The Congresses and Presidents we've elected since Vietnam have proven they aren't capable of directing a war well. That's not their job, after all. If we really wanted to "do something for the Veterans" it would be most effective to elect politicians who stand down and trust career military leaders to prosecute military action.

Perhaps that would bring America closer to a time of peaceful defense, rather than random military involvement in global politics.

America earned some of its lessons of liberty with blood and inglorious sacrifice. Other nations America respects may deserve their own opportunity to learn those lessons, too, in whatever way they choose, rather than under American's "protection" and influence. This course of action won't leave warfighters watching their hard-fought objectives falling back into the "wrong" hands, wondering what their sacrifice was for, worried that it was all for naught. No one who's worn a military uniform ought to be forced by their government to confront those questions, but that's the government America has until and unless we vote to change it.

Response to the Religious "Unrest" in Old Jerusalem

Poets are sometimes called upon to write what arrives in thought. This is one of those poems.

The Wreck of Grace

sin (n): an immoral act considered to be a transgression against divine law

They tell me Jesus died for our sins
Yours and mine
These eviscerated bodies we’d rather not claim.

Jesus left room
For acts not so divine
Turning off the lights, for example,
Might transgress divine law
Since he called the light good
But there’s nothing immoral about darkness
Or what happens there…mostly.
Do I waste his time
Praying for light
When I might meet him
Here in the dark?

He made me perfect, not sick...
How can a perfect creator
Form people of faith
Call them to his will –
To murder non-believers
Sick in immorality?

Accept that?
How can I forsake all other ways except
This shipwreck of grace –
Perfect tomb of skeletons
Broken in some zealous abyss?

My faith wants food
Fire
Breath
Children, parents, friends
Light and dark
Sound and silence
Music, dancing and quiet rest.
A place
Saved for some ascetic hippie
To sit down in our circle
And speak to us
Of God.

Can Wealth Really Help?

This simple chart illustrates the impact of wealth creation through free enterprise. About 35% of the world's population lives in China and India, and both countries' economic reforms in the last twenty-five years have had a dramatic effect on wealth distribution. The common factor in economic reform that results in less poverty? Unleashing capitalism.

In contrast to the narrative of those hostile to capitalism, the World Bank reports (October 9, 2014) that: "The poorest parts of the world are precisely those that are cut off from the world of markets and commerce, often because of government policies."

A Wall Street Journal piece written by Douglas A Irwin (November 2, 2014) titled "The Ultimate Global Antipoverty Program," makes the observation that "world-wide income inequality -- measured across countries and individual people -- is falling, not rising" (emphasis added).

There is hope for wealth creation, and great potential for that increased wealth to benefit those who need it most, whether they are bootstrapping themselves out of "third world" status or creating, funding and running a humanitarian organization to do what government can barely manage to do.

Clearly, governments that seek self-preservation through increased control and expansion of services stand in the way of both freedom and capitalism -- shackling an entrepreneur in either the public or private sector ought to be a crime. Currently-trendy scare tactics of income inequality requiring some form of government intervention to level the paying field only work on the uninformed. Instead, we ought to be celebrating the effect that economic freedom has had worldwide and supporting those willing to create wealth, whether for commercial or humanitarian purposes.

For more about how capitalism could help the humanitarian sector, please visit the Charity Defense Council.

Music for Military Family Month

It’s distressing to watch news reports claiming this or that “new treatment for PTSD” can help Veterans. There’s nothing new about our human response to trauma: we are properly hardwired to react strongly to disturbing experiences and images. If there is any kind of disorder associated with post-traumatic stress, it is the disorder of attempting to suppress a normal human response to violence, trauma or mental/emotional abuse. Progressive health care professionals are quite right to refer to “post traumatic stress injury,” which is a more accurate and ethical term.

Instead of attempting to “treat” post-traumatic stress, wouldn’t a better approach be more holistic? Would it not be healthier for our human systems to work to integrate a traumatic experience into our human fabric in a healthful way – to allow the horror to become a part of our psyche in a healthful and useful way rather than burying the trauma as some unacceptable event? This stuff actually happened to us – it’s not some imaginary thing that can be blocked out mentally or emotionally! Shouldn’t that fact change how we deal with trauma?

Prolonged exposure to traumatic experiences can dull the system to exactly how terrible traumatic triggers are, but it does nothing to remove the triggers. We are hardwired to respond deeply to horrific events. Do you or anyone you know enjoy watching movies that scare the living daylights out of you? In small doses, terror can actually be fun…for some of us. But there’s a limit; after that, we tend to store up the accumulated psychic wreckage of repeated trauma until our responses to even very banal events trigger crazy behavior. This is how we work, folks, so we’d better learn to deal with it.

Fortunately our human systems include built-in capabilities that help us process or responses to extreme trauma. Yes: we can eliminate the harmful effects of horror and reshape our psyches in a less trigger-prone direction. Have you ever experienced, either by choice or involuntarily, a once-in-a-lifetime event that changed you forever? As you look back on that impossible-seeming event, do you feel now that you could relive it, probably with a lesser effect? That’s your hardwiring taking over – making you conscious of a dramatic change that’s happened to you. If you could tap into that hardwiring to help process trauma, would you?

This is not new: human beings have been using awareness of our internal systems for centuries, perhaps millennia. Martial arts, especially the romantic notions of some ideal ninja warrior, illustrate ways we can train ourselves to access the deep inner world of our hardwired responses to terror and anguish. Fortunately there are other more practical ways. Yoga, which prepares the body for meditation, is one way that the body and mind become quiet and ready for opening to the psychic integration of traumatic experience. But one doesn’t need training as a ninja warrior or yogi to access human hardwiring for dealing with traumatic stress. There’s an easier way.

Direct access to the subconscious world is available using music. Music that moves you beyond the obvious level of “like” or “dislike” – beyond “enjoy” or “hate” – has the ability to connect you to the part of your traumatic response where the work of integration begins. Terms for this process include “washing away the pain” or “letting go” or “feeling free of the terror,” but these are very limited ways of describing what really takes place. In the inner work of both intentionally triggering and holistically assimilating a traumatic event, music can provide a cleansing bath in which horror’s harmful effects are transformed in a neutral buoyancy of acceptance and relief. Both psychologists and spiritual teachers have terms for this process, and it is highly valued in both practices as a turning point towards wholeness.

I have had several such musical moments – psychic epiphanies if you like – in my life. Sometimes it feels like my flesh is crawling, or skin tingling. Sometimes I have been unable to stop weeping for many minutes or even hours. Sometimes I get the creepy coldness of sheer terror; sometimes it feels like I’ve let go of some impossibly heavy weight.

You can jack into this musical response in your system; it’s simple and effective. First, choose a piece of music you love – it doesn’t have to be music that triggers a trauma response, but it must be music that moves you deeply in some way. Next, give yourself uninterrupted time – your response may take a while or it may happen very quickly. Then, set your intention to stay with the music until you feel a change and LISTEN.

The last time I was seriously suicidal I decided to listen and let the music work on me. (I’ve been letting music work on me while I play the piano for many years, but this time I decided NOT to play.) That night I chose to listen to a piece of piano music by Rachmaninoff – Etude Tableaux Opus 39 number 2 in A minor, a song I learned to play as part of my music degree – which holds much meaning for me. Using over-the ear headphones, I took my feelings of suicide with me to a comfortable chair, put the track on repeat, told myself I was safe and that I wouldn’t allow anything to happen until I had changed, and I just forced myself to sit and listen. I don’t know how long I sat there.

After some time I know that my feelings of rage and hopelessness simply shifted, or melted, and I just began to weep. While I didn’t know what would happen next, I knew then that I wouldn’t kill myself. I wept for hours that night, and woke the next day with a renewed interest in life and possibility…exhausted, but changed.

I’m still exploring the trauma I’ve accumulated over 50+ years, and learning to understand the changes all of it has made in me. Therapy has been useful to supercharge that process, and I feel like I could take up the work or put it aside at any time, but there is a sort of beauty to learning about the traumatic scar tissue that’s built up in me over my lifetime. It’s not so much recalling the events – sometimes I don’t consciously know or clearly understand what they were. The process feels more like re-touching the place that was once hurt; reminding myself that this injury, too, is a part of who I am. As I continue this work, I feel as if I do know myself more fully, but the most important result has been the relief that comes from knowing that the hurt place I’ve just touched again is OK. That helps me to feel more OK. Many times I can find those hurt places quickly with music; many times they appear and integrate into whatever limited wholeness I have. Sometimes the understanding or change in the pain comes like a deeper meaning for the particular song that revealed it to me. It’s an ongoing journey, this learning about my many responses to trauma. Music has always been one of the tools I turn to and I’ve learned others, like yoga, drumming, meditation, tapping, even an amazing physical tool called Trauma Release Exercise. There’s a lot I can do to mind myself on my journey with pain and trauma, and I take every opportunity to do so.

Yes: music can also help integrate my response to other intense feelings. Like me, you’ve probably retained musical memories from significant events throughout your life. The good ones come back to visit as nostalgia. We can take our intention deeply into those pleasant memories using music and often gain satisfying additional depth from them. I like to share music with those I love. Have you ever thought about why you made a new mix tape or playlist for your significant other, or to accompany a road trip, or take you through a workout? Expand on that: share your music more widely with collective intention – with family, friends, your co-workers, your unit. There’s a powerful beauty to sound-tracking your significant moments that can also infuse your day-to-day productivity, mental/emotional health and even your physical stamina and mental prowess.

November 2014 is Military Family Month. It’s my wish that military families would share some music together this month, perhaps even make some music together or sing together. What could it hurt? And what it might help! Drum together, go to a sporting event and sing the national anthem together; whether you’re serving active duty or a Veteran, teach your family the words to the song for your branch and then sing it together. If you’re a little crazy like my family, put on some disco and dance together. The sky’s the limit and it’s time to soar.

As the Marines say, semper fi. This is stuff you can do NOW. It’s safe. It’s effective. It works to strengthen bonds between brothers, sisters, parents and families. Every one of us deserves that, and no one need wait to start having that NOW.

Beyond the "Sea of Goodwill" -- a call for private-sector leadership

In a white paper published October 2014 titled "After the Sea of Goodwill: A Collective Approach to Veteran Reintegration," the Department of Defense makes a plea for private sector versus government leadership. This is courageous.

Background

By way of background, I'd like to quote directly from that white paper:

"In 2010, the Office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff published a white paper called 'Sea of Goodwill: Matching the Donor to the Need,' which called for community action teams to address the [Veteran] 'reintegration trinity' of education, employment and access to health care. These needs are most prevalent as Veterans and their families reintegrate into civilian communities."

In the four years since "Sea of Goodwill" was published, doing Veteran reintegration well continues to be the hottest topic at Veteran Services organizations, public and private agencies engaged in the sector and at philanthropic funders. Everyone wants the same thing; doing it more effectively remains in many ways elusive.

There have been valiantly organized attempts to raise the bar. Here in San Diego, the San Diego Veterans Coalition (SDVC) has done a good job of sifting through the hundreds of humanitarian and for-profit organizations serving Veterans, and connected many of the effective ones with government agencies, beginning to realize a cooperative economy of scale. Expert navigation portals such as 2-1-1 San Diego, have provided a tech-savvy backbone for connecting Veterans and families with available services. The SDVC model is now being replicated in other states. The San Diego Military/Family Collaborative has achieved similar results working with active-duty Service members and families.

Largely at the direction of funders such as San Diego Grantmakers, the San Diego Veterans Coalition and Military/Family Collaborative have combined efforts to create a road map for Veteran reintegration now known as Military Transition Support Project or MTSP. This formal collective impact project is well-funded and expertly staffed and includes organizations ranging from those mentioned to the US Navy and elected officials, the latter jumping on board to help take credit for work largely done prior to their participation.

Respected scholarly institutions, among them University of Southern California's School of Social Work and Syracuse University's Institute for Veterans and Military Families and Institute for National Security and Counterterrorism, have examined Veterans' reintegration needs. There have been formal and informal calls for, as Syracuse University's paper calls it, "A National Veterans Strategy." The white papers and reports, developed along the same lines and during the concurrent timeframe that the San Diego Veterans Coalition and Military/Family Collaborative were taking shape, generally describe and underscore what has been learned in the collaborative field about the work remaining to be done, how to do it well, and how business models must change to achieve that.

Today's Veterans services

There continue to be many hundreds -- some put the number at more than 4,000 -- tax-advantaged humanitarian non-governmental organizations with an interest in service to Veterans. Most operate on shoestring budgets with minimal staff. Unknown to some, much duplication of program efforts exists. Common to all is duplication of administrative and financial effort. Also common to all is increased competition for funding.

It seems clear that, if government were doing the best possible job to deliver Veterans services, none of these NGOs -- or perhaps vastly fewer of them -- would be needed. Case in point: the Veterans Administration Healthcare System recently admitted that traveling more than 40 miles to reach a VA Medical Center could be burdensome to some Veterans, so it collaborated with private health insurers to extend non-VA Medical Center care to Veterans so as to adequately meet this need.

In the big picture painted by "After the Sea of Goodwill," it seems that the Joint Chiefs have also begun to realize the limitations of government. While they agree that, to have collective impact, many of the issues explored by the reports, white papers and successful collaboratives will need to be played out nationally, the following rather surprising admission lies at the core of what will make Veteran reintegration successful:

"The creation of a comprehensive, government-led Veterans strategy may be a bridge too far. Critics might suggest that the government is not the solution or that it cannot move quickly enough, but those are no (sic) reasons to disregard the need to seek an alternative solution. We believe that long-term, sustainable success in a national Veterans strategy is more likely if the effort is embraced and led by the private sector, which can often more faster to address exigent need....

"Free of both the political and bureaucratic constraints inherent in Federal government, private sector stakeholders have a unique opportunity to lead the country toward a structure that offers functional cooperation, cross-sector collaboration and an integrated network."

(emphasis added)

This begs the question of whether the private sector can respond any better than the government, since there are still significant barriers to success in both cases, but I agree with the Joint Chiefs' assessment of leadership for this effort: it needs to -- some might say must -- come from the private sector.

Why?

The Federal government is intended to be deliberative, slow to reach a decision and prudent in execution of the decisions reached. There is a reason for the government's proliferation of funding for studies: a study doesn't compel the government to do anything, while the politicians and bureaucrats commissioning these studies can claim "support" for issues of importance to their constituencies. As good as the ideas or data may be, government is ill-equipped to act expediently outside of its deliberative, political process, and a government agency is not, by and large, supposed to be the epitome of efficiency and customer service. If there is any doubt about the prior statement, look only as far as the latest "crisis" being addressed by the government: has government actually been able to make positive sustainable change on any perceived "crisis" in recent memory? Take, for example, the recent change in leadership at the Veterans Administration; what expectation of improvement makes this change any different from the last?

Private entities have a much different motivation to provide effective, well-managed services that delight their customers. Whether working for profit or for tax-advantaged charitable purposes, private organizations have the ability to be measured by their success in a way that governmental organizations do not: competition. As a customer, if I get less than satisfactory service from Organization A, I'm free to investigate what Organization B can offer me. I don't have that choice at the Department of Motor Vehicles, or the Child Support Services Agency; Veterans don't have that choice at their VA Benefits office nor do they have that choice at the VA Medical Center (although Veteran health care may be opening up just a bit as noted above).

The Need for Leadership

Depending on one's political affiliation, most of this blog may seem either obvious or ridiculous, but that's not the point. The point is that, when the Department of Defense recognizes that doing the right thing for Veterans is important, it cannot be ignored. This goes beyond DoD telling the VA to get its act together; DoD recognizes the security risks inherent in doing the Veterans services job poorly. That is, taking good care of our Veterans encourages potential military recruits who might otherwise choose to walk away from putting their lives on the line due to poor health care options after active duty. Taking good care of Veterans puts active duty service in the forefront of career choices because an informed civilian sector understands the skills and abilities -- including leadership -- that a Veteran brings to civilian service. Taking good care of Veterans strengthens the social fabric of the nation. All of these things enhance the cohesive structure of America's great experiment in representative democracy. DoD's charter to maintain a strong national defense lies at the heart of its call for effective private-sector leadership in Veterans reintegration services.

The most effective NGOs in the Veterans services sector already have wide footprints. They have reached this level of ability and influence for one reason: they outperformed their competitors. That's how the private sector works: you've got to be good to survive. Veterans know which NGOs are effective and why, and when a Veteran trusts the services of an NGO, that's the best possible recommendation any organization can get. The challenge now is for the leaders of those effective, sustainable NGOs to come forward and do something many of them are neither designed nor inclined to do: collaborate.

Respected former VAMC Director and co-founder of the San Diego Veterans Coalition, Gary Rossio, likes to quote Harry Truman's adage that "it's amazing what can be accomplished when no one cares who gets the credit." That's true in a sense, but in a bona fide collective impact model, such as the MTSP, everyone cares about doing the job well and everyone will share the credit...if the job is well done. Something else Gary likes to say is even more to the point regarding competition in the Veterans services sector: "No one has ever lost business by collaborating." Gary ought to know: he is the principal consultant on the Michigan Veterans Coalition and was part of the team that set up SDVC as well as the Veterans Coalition in San Antonio, Texas.

The difference between networking and collaboration ought to be obvious: knowing your competition, even on a first-name basis, is much different than working side by side with it. Collaboration demands that we work alongside similar or even directly-competitive organizations to achieve more than either one us could do alone. Collective impact goes even further: we actually agree to share customers and resources in pursuit of the big goal -- and expect credit and additional business to accrue to all organizations participating!

Military Veterans understand collective impact. It's inherent in military training. Unit commanders are trained to maximize effectiveness of their team AND to closely integrate their team to the entire campaign with assiduous attention to cooperation and coherent action. Leaders in the private sector of collective impact projects could benefit from this understanding: there's no place in collective impact to undercut teams with whom you are cooperating, even if they come from organizations you would call "the competition" on any other day.

It's hard to find leaders who think about the entire sector of whatever their enterprise may be with a mind to cooperate with their competition and maximize everyone's results. But that's what's needed. "After the Sea of Goodwill" presents both the framework and the need for exemplary leaders. These leaders will be incredible people. They will think about the success of every organization as it means working together to provide the best possible solutions to Veterans reintegration. They will reach out to include organizations who may be less effective as well as organizations with exemplary effectiveness. They will be able to mitigate the issues between organizations, government agencies, politicians and perhaps even the for-profit sector so that the combined mission stays in the forefront of every decision.

It seems self-evident that the private-sector leaders the Joint Chiefs are calling upon to truly and finally change Veterans reintegration for good will themselves be outstanding Veterans.

Here's Looking for You

I hate the cruel ease of our airport

romance-free zone ripping us apart

curbside kiss fractured by a barking cop

you spin away, sexy in running shorts

angry for your own reasons,

the goodbye I want crushed deep into my gut unpunctured

as you wrestle into sloppy traffic,

miss me standing around unfriendly baggage

two fingers on my lips, maudlin, not wanting to turn

toward the sterile confined journey away from you

not wanting to remember how it all ends:

only after we admit how much we missed

only after you collect me at this same curb

only after you come toward me through the mist of distance as you do

eyes gently softened

only after that, when I have been back for hours or days

is it safe to be home with you

again

First ObamaCare Disorder Identified

Today, the American Psychiatric Association recognized a new mental disorder which afflicts subscribers of subsidized health insurance policies as mandated by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, aka “ObamaCare.” The disorder, commonly known as PPACAD (Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act Disorder) or simply “OD” (ObamaCare Disorder), is a precursor to and some cases a trigger of other more severe disorders, including depressive and anxiety disorders, trauma and stress-related disorders, and some conduct and substance-related and addictive disorders.

“The existence of a classifiable mental disorder directly related to obtaining care for, among other issues, mental disorders, is a new development in the annals of care,” said Dr Jameson Timothea Hiott, spokesperson for the Association. “The surge in our case work nationwide coincides with the launch of ObamaCare, and anecdotal evidence is so strong that we have moved quickly both to formally identify PPACAD [PEE-pa-cad] as a treatable disorder and launch a nationwide preliminary study of its grip on participants in the new health insurance coverage offered under ObamaCare.”

Some estimates put the spread of PPACAD at 70-80% of all ObamaCare insureds, although many Medicare and Medicaid recipients may have correlative symptoms. “It’s simply too soon to know how widespread this disorder may have become,” said Dr Hiott.

The pharmaceutical industry, represented by a coalition of public relations Vice Presidents from many of the biggest drug makers, including Pfizer, Novartis, Sanofi, Roche, Merck and GlaxoSmithKline, released a statement indicating that many of their best-selling products are already in clinical trials for intervention with symptoms of PPACAD, which range from acute anxiety to severe depression, schizophrenic episodes, and elevated desire to overeat, drink heavily and, in some cases, suicidal ideation and loss of libido. “We’re confident that we can address these new symptomologies with our existing products,” the statement read in part, “and that the psychiatric industry will move quickly to prescribe responsible use of proper pharmacological treatment for the many people afflicted with this new disorder.”

In a related story, the Veterans Administration Healthcare System and Department of Defense have launched an emergency study of a PPACAD-related symptomology that may be related to high coincidence of suicide and elevated susceptibility to post-traumatic stress disorder among Veterans and service members.

At press time, officials of the Health and Human Services agency and the White House were too high to be available for comment.