Canadian military pledges to take action on soldier suicides

It wouldn't be Canada unless the military was being spit on and neglected.

First it was the British using Canadian soldiers as fodder so many year ago, today it's domestic neglect. Sad and dispicable.

One of the major factors affecting combat veterans these days is guilt over killing people and guilt over surviving when friends have died in battle.

You fix #1 by not insisting that the military focus on promoting sensitivity. Sensitive people kill themselves when they have to do serious things.

Train them to be killers. If you can't bear the thought of training your warriors to be warriors then follow the lead of Costa Rica and dispense with having a military.

Same goes for the USA.

I doubt it's a simple as that. PTSD breaks hard men just as easily as it does the allegedly soft ones. And the effect of being around repetitive concussive blasts, as proven by the shell shock from World War One through to today, has as much to do with soldiers breaking as does being exposed to atrocities or seeing their comrades killed. Even with years of training normal humans still react negatively to things that are seen in war, and it's only the psychopaths and sadists that regard it as "no big deal". I'd like to not see this issue backslide into the black vs. white stupidity of previous years where it was cast as being a simple case of tough guys and wimps. Given the nature of the times though, with stupidity running rampant again at all levels across the entire planet, that hope will probably be just another forlorn one.

You're not reading me here.

When the military places a priority on sensitivity it serves to reinforce the guilt that many men are going to feel after performing their duties.

If you kill people on the battlefield and then go home expecting to receive support for what you did that helps a lot of guys get past the guilt.

But if they know that their own branch of service is going to treat them as pariahs for having done their job then you're pushing more guys over the line.

Train them to be killers, support them and recognize them when they do the job well, and you'll have fewer suicides.

Train them to be sensitive and they start out with the dilemma of reconciling the sensitivity they're supposed to display with the realities of the mission.

And the disapproval is noted when troops get courts martialed for slapping an enemy combatant. But killing the fucker outright is okay.

Part of why I said no to coming back last month. These people who are running the show have no fucking idea what it is that a military is supposed to do. And I imagine Canada's military is worse in this regard.