By Karen Parrish
American Forces Press Service
SINGAPORE – The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
yesterday said he disagrees “in the strongest possible terms” with an Army
major general’s characterization of suicide as a selfish act.
“I’ve been in contact with Army senior
leadership and know they share my concern,” Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey said,
regarding recent controversy over Army Maj. Gen. Dana J.H. Pittard’s blog
comments, since retracted.
Dempsey spoke with American Forces Press
Service while flying here for the Shangri-La Dialogue, an annual Asia security
summit that begins today.
Pittard, commander of the 1st Armored
Division and Fort Bliss, Texas, wrote the blog post in January after attending
the memorial service of one of his soldiers, who took his own life. Pittard
wrote that he is “personally fed up with soldiers who are choosing to take
their own lives so that others can clean up their mess.”
Dempsey said the comments were “both
unfortunate and extremely inappropriate.”
In retracting the remarks last week,
Pittard expressed his “deepest sincerity and respect towards those whom I have
offended,” noting suicide is a very complex issue that plagues not just the
military, but society overall.
There have been 140 suicides across the
services thus far in 2012, according to defense officials. This compares with
122 at this time last year, and 110 at this point in 2010. Among current and
former service members who have deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, more have
died by suicide than by enemy action.
The Army is the largest military branch
and sees the most suicides, but the Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force as well as
the Army have poured time, money, effort and training into programs and
services aimed at stemming the tragic flood. Veteran suicides are also
alarmingly high, at 18 per day as reported by the U.S. Department of Veterans
Affairs.
“We’ve been hard at [combating suicide]
for at least the last seven years,” the chairman said. “We have not spared any
effort, but nor have we turned the trend line.”
Dempsey said he has spoken often and at
length about the need for professional military members, from the newest
recruit to the most senior officer, “to be very introspective at this point in
our history about what a prolonged conflict, the longest war in our history,
with an all-volunteer force, has done to us and to our families.”
“The issue of suicide, and all of the
other tragic mental health issues that we have experienced over the last 10
years of war, require us to continue to seek to learn,” he added.
Senior leaders in particular are
“accountable for helping the entire profession, the entire force, understand
the issues,” the chairman said, adding that Pittard’s comments “didn't help,
but hurt, our efforts to understand. They added another layer of
confusion."
Leaders must help men and women who are
experiencing “incredible stresses in their lives” get help, he added.
Dempsey said his approach is to ensure
military leaders don’t address issues such as suicide in isolation.
“We’ve got … the issue of increasing
suicides; we’ve got statistics that demonstrate sexual assault remains [an
issue]; we’ve got an increase in reported instances of hazing,” he said. “Not
all are related to war, but all are related to who we believe we are, and …
what knowledge, skills and attributes we seek in the young men and women who
serve -- and the not-so-young men and women who serve.”
The chairman said his goal is to see
those issues in context with each other, and to ensure recruiting, policies,
education and training across the forces are managed to address the issues as
effectively as possible.
“Over the last 10 years we’ve learned a
lot about what attributes we may need for the future,” Dempsey said. “Are we,
in our recruiting base, seeking them? In our education system, are we
developing them? In our evaluation reports, are we rewarding them?”
The military is a wonderful profession
of which he couldn’t be more proud, Dempsey said, yet there are now a number of
“weak signals” that, taken together, emphasize the need for continued learning
and change.
“Ultimately, we are responsive to the
people of the United States of America and to the Constitution,” he said.
“You’re not a profession just because you say you are, you’re a profession
because you earn that title every day. This is another one of those instances
where I think we’ve got to take a good hard look at ourselves.”
The chairman noted he often speaks of
maintaining the bond of trust within the military.
Part of that bond rests in leaders
paying attention to the mental health of service members, building in their
troops a sense of resilience and the self-confidence that comes with “hard
training, knowing you’re mentored, knowing you’re cared for, knowing there’s
someone out there that cares about you and you’re part of a team,” he said.
Multiple pressures come to bear in the
lives of service members and their families, Dempsey said.
“We’ve got to keep at this,” he said.
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