Beacon Broadside

The Death of Chris Kyle and the Need for Soul Repair

Rita Nakashima Brock, Ph. D. is Founding Co-Director of the Soul Repair Center at Brite Divinity School.(www.britesoulrepair.org). She was a professor for twenty years, directed the Fellowship Program at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University, a prominent advanced research institute, and from 2001-2002, was a Fellow at the Harvard Divinity School Center for Values in Public Life. Her latest book is Soul Repair: Recovering from Moral Injury After War, co-authored with Gabriella Lettini.

The killing of Iraq veteran and national figure Chris Kyle prompted media queries and questions for the three of us who run the Soul Repair Center at Brite Divinity School. Our Center is dedicated to recovery from moral injury in veterans. Rev. Dr. Coleman Baker, Chaplain (Col.) Herman Keizer, Jr. (ret.) and I spent a day reflecting together on what went wrong when Kyle tried to help a fellow vet. Here are some of our reflections.

Chris Kyle, a well-decorated Navy SEAL sniper, completed four tours in Iraq with an extraordinary record of kills. Kyle's book about his experiences in the clandestine fraternity gained him much admiration. Then, a week ago on a firing range in Texas, Eric Routh, a Marine reservist who served in Iraq, killed him and his fellow veteran Chad Littlefield.

Kyle was beloved by many because he tried to support his fellow vets in returning to civilian life, but it seems clear that Kyle himself never really left the military. He overcame his own struggles with alcohol and a fear of leaving his house by re-building a military cocoon as a means of therapy. Kyle's idea of what worked best for returning veterans was the military espirt de corps of an active unit. He used the tools of his military experience at his Fitco Care Foundation, designing treatments built on exercise, counseling and veteran camaraderie. And he kept a live-fire range open and invited others to shoot for therapy.

He recreated the military world of heroism both at work and with other vets. He wanted veterans to be seen as strong and heroic, like soldiers who serve honorably and heroically and for the sake of others. His life was dedicated to still being part of the war. "Being able to do this makes me feel like I'm still a part of it and still giving back."

In trying to treat Eric Routh by echoing his war experience, Kyle, who sought to stay in war, may have provoked a desperate Routh to seek escape from such "help." By not questioning whether military values can simply be relived in civilian life, Kyle failed to understand difficulties some returning vets might have with a "HOOHA" model of counseling and training, especially those with traumatic brain injuries, PTSD, and moral injury. For veterans who feel betrayed by the government, have serious trauma, or experience a collapse of moral meaning after war, more exposure to military life can compound the difficulty of adjusting to the civilian world.

In a telling comment, however, about his first kill in Iraq, Kyle hints at the personal cost of leaving his cocoon: 

It was hard trying to wrap my mind around "Well, how can I shoot another human being?" And even the first time I had to do it, they're yelling at me. "You have to do it! Take it! Take it!" And it's still trying to get over the fact that, well, I'm fixin' to have to kill someone.

 

And then you do it, and you have to think of it differently. You're not killing a person, you're killing an enemy that if you don't do it, they're gonna kill your guys. ... You have to de-humanize it, so you don't go crazy.

In his civilian life, Kyle continued this strategy of de-humanizing his enemies. He referred to people in Iraq as "savages." He also dismissed civilians as shallow and selfish. 

We think Kyle had a good point about civilian society. The care for each other unto death and the willingness to die in service to others bonds a combat unit in ways that are rare in civilian life. During the Iraq War, civilians were shielded from images of coffins returning home and were advised to shop, rather than make personal sacrifices to support the troops. The narcissism, personal ambitions, and self-obsessions with consumerism and celebrity culture have prompted some veterans to ask, "I fought for this?"

Without a new social, emotional, spiritual system that can help veterans of war move from a military system to civilian life, we sentence many of them to military cocoons or lonely states of limbo from which transition is nigh impossible.

Few institutions in our culture ask people to commit to each other over the whole life course, from birth to death. Few organizations welcome strangers and include them in a community of care; attend to those who need help, feel hurt or are troubled in their souls; and hold each other accountable for living into their best selves in circles of generosity and reciprocity. These commitments of lifelong weekly activities describe congregational life. Though no congregation does them perfectly, most try their best, and many do them well.

We believe that congregations are one place that should be welcoming veterans home, but few have committed to this work. It should not be undertaken with just simple good intentions, though good intentions matter a great deal. To welcome veterans into a community's life, we need to understand how to assist the transition from the values of military life to religious life. We must advocate for better services for treating PTSD, and we must support veterans' families and all they go through to welcome veterans home.

We mourn the deaths of Chris Kyle and Chad Littlefield. They are tragic, senseless killings that have left their families and friends with unimaginable loss. We may never know why they were killed. However, we hope their deaths can help us all better understand the complicated and difficult return to civilian life for combat veterans and see this as an important responsibility of us all.

Without adequate ways for veterans to process their war experience, reflect on its moral and psychological impact, and restore them to civilian life, we fail as a society to bring them all the way home. Tragically, just before he died, Kyle hinted he might be ready to come home. He wanted to slow down and just take care of his family, saying he was tired: "I'm just trying to be the me that I am and not all of this other crap."

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Honoring our Veterans, Understanding their Challenges

During the Civil War, the Press of the American Unitarian Association—the fledging publishing house founded in 1854 that grew into Beacon Press—published a tract called A Soldier's Companion.

This handy booklet, intended to supply Union soldiers with solace and inspiration, included hymns, anthems, poems, and practical instructions. Some 57,000 were distributed, free of charge, during the course of the war.

Amid songs and hymns about freedom and temperance were allusions linking the American Revolution—the patriotic fight for independence from England—with freedom for all mankind. References to abolition and the dreaded fugitive slave laws were scattered throughout the booklet. The poem “Wipe out, O God! The Nation’s Sin,” for example, warned, “There is no liberty for them / Who make their brethren slave.” Songs like “Arouse, New England Sons” invoked,“Free! While the very homes you’ve made / Beside your fathers’ graves/ Are pillaged, if ye dare to aid / The panting, flying slave?” Luminaries such as Harriet Beecher Stowe altered classics to fit the cause; her lyrics to “America, the Beautiful” included the lines “Let Freedom’s banner wave / Till there be not a slave.” A Soldier’s Companion also contained practical advice to men in the field. Soldiers were warned, for example, to “sleep as much as you can,” avoid “all use of ardent spirits,” and “wear flannel all over in all weathers.” (From A Brief History of Beacon Press by Susan Wilson.)

In the years since, many Beacon Press books have examined the issues faced by soldiers at war and upon their return home. 

My River Home: A Journey from the Gulf War to the Gulf of Mexico
by Marcus Eriksen

During the course of the war in Iraq, many veterans have become increasingly disillusioned, and increasingly vocal. Many began seeing the war as damaging for the country, and especially for the men and women fighting overseas. In My River Home, Marcus Eriksen, a veteran of the Gulf War, charts his personal shift from proud Marine to self-destructive veteran to engaged activist protesting the injustices of the Iraq War with Veterans for Peace. Eriksen made sense of this transition only after a fascinating adventure traveling through the heart of America, down the entire length of the great Mississippi River on a homemade raft.

 

The Lonely Soldier: The Private War of Women Serving in Iraq
by Helen Benedict

More American women have fought and died in Iraq than in any war since World War Two, yet as soldiers they are still painfully alone. In Iraq, only one in ten troops is a woman, and she often serves in a unit with few other women or none at all. This isolation, along with the military's deep-seated hostility toward women, causes problems that many female soldiers find as hard to cope with as war itself: degradation, sexual persecution by their comrades, and loneliness, instead of the camaraderie that every soldier depends on for comfort and survival. As one female soldier said, "I ended up waging my own war against an enemy dressed in the same uniform as mine."

In The Lonely Soldier, Benedict tells the stories of five women who fought in Iraq between 2003 and 2006. She follows them from their childhoods to their enlistments, then takes them through their training, to war and home again, all the while setting the war's events in context. 

 

Love in Condition Yellow: A Memoir of an Unlikely Marriage
by Sophia Raday 

Berkeley peace activist Sophia Raday never imagined she would fall in love with an Oakland police officer and major in the Army Reserve, much less marry one. Barrett is loving and loyal, but in his world a threat lies around every corner, and so he asks Sophia to stay in Condition Yellow—always aware that her life may be in danger soon. Sophia's heart-wrenching yet humorous narrative about coming to a new understanding of peace and partnership gives hope for healing the deep divisions in our country, from the front lines of a most unusual union.

 

The Sutras of Abu Ghraib: Notes from a Conscientious Objector in Iraq
by Aidan Delgado

As the planes hit the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, Aidan Delgado was in the process of enlisting in the U.S. Army Reserve. Two years later, he arrived in Iraq with the 320th Military Police Company. As he witnessed firsthand the brutality of the occupation and the abuse of unarmed Iraqis, Delgado came to believe that war was immoral and ran counter to his Buddhist principles. He turned in his weapon and began the long process of securing conscientious objector status. His book is urgent reading for anyone who cares about American ideals overseas, and for all those who understand why peace is patriotic.

 

Flashback: Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, Suicide, and the Lessons of War
by Penny Coleman

In the early 1970s, Penny Coleman married Daniel, a young Vietnam veteran and fellow photographer. Soon, Daniel became deeply troubled, falling victim to multiple addictions and becoming strangely insecure. He suffered from what we now call posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). After Coleman left him, he committed suicide.

Struggling to understand Daniel's experience, Coleman began investigating the history of PTSD; she found clear cases of the disorder as far back as the Civil War. In Flashback, Coleman deftly weaves psychology and military, political, oral, and cultural history to trace the experience of PTSD in the military up through the Vietnam War. She then focuses on Vietnam to show why this war in particular led to such a high number of PTSD cases, many of which ended tragically in suicide. Like the soldiers listed on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial wall, these men are casualties of war.

With record numbers of American soldiers returning from the Middle East already suffering from PTSD, Flashback provides a necessary lesson on the real tragedy of battle for soldiers and their families, something that continues long after the war ends.

Observation Post by Philip C. Winslow Memorial Day Snapshots

Today's post is the latest in a Beacon Broadside series: Observation Post by journalist and foreign correspondent Philip C. Winslow. Over a career that has spanned more than twenty-five years, Winslow has reported on world events for the Christian Science Monitor, the Toronto Star, Maclean's magazine, ABC radio news, CTV News, and CBC radio. He also served in two United Nations peacekeeping missions and worked for the UN in the West Bank for nearly three years. He is the author of Victory For Us Is to See You Suffer: In the West Bank with the Palestinians and the Israelis and Sowing the Dragon's Teeth: Land Mines and the Global Legacy of War.

On a perfect Memorial Day morning, I bicycled out of Boston to a Veterans Affairs medical center in Jamaica Plain, to see if there might be a commemorative service for patients. It's no longer an inpatient facility, and was closed for the holiday. But as I rounded a corner not far from the hospital, I heard The Marines' Hymn ("From the Halls of Montezuma, to the shores of Tripoli...") and a medley of other armed forces songs booming off the walls of a highway overpass. At American Legion Post 76, small flags were stuck in the lawn, and spectators snapped pictures as a color guard formed up in the parking lot. A half dozen former soldiers, young and no longer young, stood at parade rest holding flags and old bolt-action carbines and exchanging a few wisecracks while the sound system was adjusted. There were short speeches, a prayer and a song with the refrain "God Bless the U.S.A," and several of the spectators sang along. The parade was short because the post is close to the highway and an intersection, and the color guard marched out of the driveway, around the building and back to the starting point.

I was struck by the span of their ages and the conflicts in which they served. The post's last World War I soldier died a couple years ago, someone said. The World War II veterans moved with deliberation, and a couple of the Vietnam vets looked to be getting creaky knees, although Vietnam seems not that long ago.

One Navy man there was Eddie MacDonald, in his late eighties. MacDonald was an underwater demolition specialist and among the first to hit the shores of France clearing mines in advance of the D-Day landing. Another Navy man, in uniform and with a lot of stripes on one sleeve, was gently said to have "seen a lot of war service"; everyone shook his hand or patted him on the back.

Joe Ratta, aged 81, an Army tank driver in World War II, was there and so was his younger brother, Frank, an infantryman in Korea. Next to Paul DeCoste, a six-foot-plus Marine who served in Vietnam, were two young men – both named Mike – from our current Iraq and Afghanistan era. When the speeches were over and the service plaques had been handed out, the good-humored crowd ambled past the flags and headed for the bar.

"This goes on in every little town across the country on Memorial Day and Veterans Day," Joe Ratta told me later. He added that every civilian cemetery in the country is covered by a veterans' organization such as the Legion or Veterans of Foreign Wars. "Ever notice the small flags in the cemetery on Memorial Day?" Joe asked. "We put them there every year." This year the Jamaica Plain post placed 1,500 flags on veterans' graves in Forest Hills cemetery alone.

Sophia Raday: Art Lesson: A Child's Drawing of the War in Iraq

Sophia Raday lives in Berkeley, California, with her soldier/police officer husband, their two children, a bipartisan dog, and assorted firearms. She is the author of Love in Condition Yellow: A Memoir of an Unlikely Marriage, which chronicles her peacenik/warrior love story and provides insight on age-old political divisions in the United States.. This post originally appeared at Sophia Raday's Love in Condition Yellow blog.

A while ago, my seven-year-old son's feelings were hurt at school when a teacher criticized one of his drawings. She looked at my son's drawing of his father and said, "Does my torso look like that?" The drawing was an in-class assignment to illustrate a homework project called "the personal timeline." For every year of my son's life, he wrote one sentence describing something important that happened.

My son's drawing is on a small white paper, about two inches square. Back in January, when he first showed it to me, he unfolded it from a tiny tight little bundle, as if he had tried to make it as small as possible. After I'd reassured him I thought it was a very good drawing, I asked if I could keep it. When he agreed, I tucked it among my credit cards.

A week or so ago, I pulled it from my purse to show a friend who directs an arts education program, while telling her the story of his teacher's reaction. She shook her head, murmuring, "but art is about creating meaning. . . " She looked at the drawing intently, noting the simple figure, the flower-like hands, the black shoes, a long neck, a round head. A sun in the corner had been erased and then enlarged to take up about a quarter of the paper. "Did you ask him what it is?" My friend inquired.

"It's his father." I said.

"But what does it mean?" she said. "Look, the clothes are colored green. Do you think it's a military uniform?"

I leaned over to look at the drawing with her, an uneasy feeling growing within me. It had been weeks since my son came home, eyes downcast, and handed me this picture, asking, "Do you think this is any good?" Weeks since we lay together at bedtime and talked about his feelings of anxiety in his classroom.

Why had I never thought to ask him what the picture meant?

Raped in the Military? You May Have to Pay for Your Own Forensic Exam Kit

Today's post is from Penny Coleman, author of Flashback: Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, Suicide, and the Lessons of War. Coleman writes frequently on Veterans' issues for Alternet, where this story originally appeared.

Sarah Palin's decision not to pay for rape kits when she was mayor of Wasilla was an issue in the campaign for the White House. But allow me to introduce the large pink elephant that has been sitting quietly in the corner of the room:

At the Winter Soldier Investigation* in March, Spec. Patricia McCann, who served in Iraq with the Illinois Army National Guard from 2003-4, read a memo issued to all MEDCOM commanders clarifying that "SAD kits"-- which are forensic rape kits--"are not included in TRICARE coverage."

TRICARE, the United States Department of Defense Military Health System that covers active duty members, will only pay for rape kits if the victim is seen in a military or a VA facility.

But the Pentagon acknowledges that 80 percent of military rapes are never reported. And that 80 percent who go off-base to protect their anonymity (and/or their careers) are on their own. If a soldier is on leave, or is five-hours from the nearest VA, or if a soldier is simply delivered to the nearest hospital by the local ambulance driver, their rape kits are not covered under TRICARE. Neither are other forensic exams that might be used in domestic violence situations.

Front-line treatment shouldn't be conditional on where a rape occurs or where the nearest treatment is available. This is not only a parity issue, but a further obstacle to treatment and justice.

Veterans’ Day: A Soldier—His Prayer

This anonymous poem was blown into a slit trench in Tunisia during a heavy bombardment in the early days of World War II. It was included in Poems to Live By in Uncertain Times, edited by Joan Murray.

A Soldier—His Prayer

Stay with me, God. The night is dark,
The night is cold: my little spark
Of courage dies. The night is long;
Be with me God, and make me strong.

I love a game; I love a fight.
I hate the dark; I love the light.
I love my child; I love my wife.
I am no coward. I love Life,

Life with its change of mood and shade.
I want to live. I'm not afraid,
But me and mine are hard to part;
Oh, unknown God, lift up my heart.

You stilled the waters at Dunkirk
And saved Your servants. All Your work
Is wonderful, dear God. You strode
Before us down that dreadful road.

We were alone, and hope had fled;
We loved our country and our dead.
And could not shame them; so we stayed
The course and were not much afraid.

Dear God that nightmare road! And then
That sea! We got there—we were men.
My eyes were blind, my feet were torn,
My soul sang like a bird at dawn.

I knew that death is but a door.
I knew what we were fighting for:
Peace for the kids, our brothers freed,
A kinder world, a cleaner breed.

I'm but the son my mother bore,
A simple man, and nothing more.
But—God of strength and gentleness,
Be pleased to make me nothing less.

Help me, O God, when Death is near
to mock the haggard face of fear,
That when I fall—if fall I must—
My soul may triumph in the Dust.

Quotable Link Roundup: Obama, Reverse Graffiti, Climate Change

"To understand military sexual assault, let alone know how to stop it, we must focus on the perpetrators." Helen Benedict on why soldiers rape.

"To us sofa slouchers, these teen Olympians are heroes. But they have the nation's pediatricians on edge." A Baltimore Sun op-ed by Mark Hyman about young athletes. Also check out Hyman answering questions about how to be a good sports parent.

"I awoke still weeping, my first real tears for him - and for me, his jailor, his judge, his son." Kelley Bulkeley, author of American Dreamers, analyzes the dreams of Barack Obama.

"[T]he artist's weapons are cleaning materials and … the enemy is the elements: wind, rain, pollution and decay." The Environmental Graffiti blog, in a convergence of title and topic.

"They're being asked now to tighten their belts, and there simply aren't any notches left, so that I think what we're going to see is people going into a huge amount of debt." Nan Mooney, author of Not Keeping Up With Our Parents, on NewsHour (available in transcript, audio or video).

"At the nation's extreme western edge, sitting over 2500 miles from the U.S. mainland, Kauians are as vulnerable to high food and energy costs as a people can be." At the Slow Food Nation blog, Mark Winne highlights the special challenges faced by a Hawaiian food bank.

"There's historical truth, which I don't discount at all, and there is, co-existing with it, a deeper truth about what it is to be a person and what it is to live your life in alignment with the sacred." Danya Ruttenberg, author of Surprised by God, at the Cultural Criticism and Beauty Tips blog.

Related Beacon Broadside posts:

Helen Benedict on female veterans.

Mark Hyman talking about Debbie Phelps, mother of Michael Phelps, the greatest Olympian in history.

Kelly Bulkeley telling Americans to get more sleep, and dissecting dreams of the presidential candidates (posts one and two).

Nan Mooney discussing how economic equality is hurting the middle class.

Mark Winne about high food prices and the food gap between the rich and the impoverished.

Monday Link Roundup: Fresh Food, Seeds, Bulbs and more

The Seattle-Post Intelligencer ran a feature last week about poor access to fresh, healthy food in economically disadvantaged neighborhoods. The article quotes Mark Winne, author of Closing the Food Gap: Resetting the Table in the Land of Plenty: "Unless cities begin to realize they have a role to play in ensuring access to healthy food, then we're going to keep stumbling along." Parke Wilde at the U.S. Food Policy blog posted a more personal take on the issue, focusing on the definition of "food desert" and the focus on chain supermarket stores as a marker of access to food. (Parke also recently interviewed Mark Winne for USFPB.)

In the wake of the leaked email showing that the VA tried to downplay the suicide epidemic, Penny Coleman wrote this analysis of the DoD's annual suicide prevention conference at Alternet.

Gristmill posted an excellent review of Uncertain Peril: Genetic Engineering and the Future of Seeds by Claire Hope Cummings. You can also read an excerpt of Uncertain Peril at Alternet.

Last Tuesday, USA Today columnist Laura Vanderkam discussed Seattle's novel approach to homelessness: give people a place to live. The piece features Rev. Craig Rennebohm, author of Souls in the Hands of a Tender God: Stories of the Search for Home and Healing on the Street.

The other "L" word: Stephen Ducat, author of The Wimp Factor: Gender Gaps, Holy Wars, and the Politics of Anxious Masculinity, offers Obama some advice on how to take back the liberal label. (Once he does that, can he take back arugula?)

There's some fantastic coverage of the PEN World Voices Festival over at MetaxuCafe. Nice redesign of that site!

Bookseller David Unowsky offers some advice on how to get your book on the shelves. The piece is aimed at self-pubbed authors, but has some good insights for any author.

And here's a great springtime parable from our friends at UUWorld.

The Psychological Trauma of War

by Margot Adler

It's not something you read in a newspaper or hear on an ordinary news show; it's only on the comedy shows like Real Time with Bill Maher where you hear it whispered: the idea that John McCain has PTSD, and that it would be scary to have his finger on the button. Whether or not this is the same kind of slur we hear from those who say Barak Obama was schooled in a madrassa, it seems perfectly reasonable to wonder if anyone who spent five years in a tiger cage might have some remnants of PTSD - even decades later.

So when I heard it on Bill Maher the other night, it reminded me that we are living in a society where thousands of young men and women, our very future, are returning home every day scarred from battles in Iraq and Afghanistan. Some of those scars are painfully visible; many others are not. Few people are really looking deeply at what this means for families and relationships, even what it means for our daily lives as Americans. Only one person that I know of in the mainstream media has delved deeply and movingly into this issue. For more than a year, in a series of searing pieces, Daniel Zwerdling at NPR has chronicled the plight of military personnel to get the mental health care they need. In many cases, veterans with PTSD have been kicked out of the military for bad behavior and are unable to access mental health services.

Ten years ago, I wrote a book called Heretic's Heart about my own life during the 1960's. Several chapters of that book were letters between me, as a twenty-year-old University of California - Berkeley student and activist, and Marc Anderson, a soldier fighting in Vietnam whom I met through the mail after he wrote a letter to the campus newspaper that could only be described as a cry from the abyss.

Monday Link Roundup: Interfaith Heroes, Praise for Our World, Womb Outsourcing, and Vet Suicides

Read the Spirit, an ambitious and thoughtful site devoted to issues of spirituality and religion, is devoting a portion of their impressive energies to a month of Interfaith Heroes. Featured so far, brief, illuminating essays on the lives of such disparate voices for tolerance as Moses Maimonides, Jaluddin Muhammed Akbar, and Roger Williams.

(Incidentally, we also owe a word of thanks to Read the Spirit for their link to us and a very flattering mention for Beacon Press generally and the blog specifically.)

In other good reviews of work from Beacon, the L.A. Times ran a thoughtful and moving piece by Susan Salter Reynolds about Our World, a book that collects Molly Malone Cook's photographs with accompanying text by her life partner, the poet Mary Oliver.

The photographs Oliver has chosen reflect Cook's intuitive relationship with her subjects (even inanimate objects). The little girl on the stoop in New York City looks directly at the photographer, as does a kindly Robert Motherwell and a fierce, almost intimidating Walker Evans. Even though most of the photographs are dominated by a central person or object, there is a lot to look at in the margins, all part of the story. The stance of her subjects -- reading a book, looking through a telescope -- is always distinctive, creating the mood of the entire composition. The two photos of Oliver could have been taken only by someone who knew the subject well.

Marketplace ran a story over the holiday break that many, including Judith Warner on the New York Times opinion blogs, found troubling. The story highlighted the practice of "womb outsourcing," an increasingly popular surrogacy option involving hopeful parents from wealthy countries paying what amounts to "bargain rates" (when compared with the high cost of surrogacy in the U.S.) for surrogates in India. Amy Tiemann at MojoMom condemned the practice – "Is this what colonialism looks like in the 21st century?" – and invited Barbara Katz Rothman, author of Weaving a Family: Untangling Race and Adoption, to comment as well:

We women of the wealthy world profit from the exploitation of poor women, men and children with almost every shirt we put on our backs, almost every bite of food we take. We exploit people in poverty and never have to think about it. And now we can profit in our motherhood -- but unlike the shirt and the food, this time the product is going to grow up and demand an explanation. (Read more here)

And, to return to a topic  we discussed during Veterans Day Week last November, Penny Coleman, author of Flashback: Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, Suicide, and the Lessons of War, has been writing about the issue of veteran suicides regularly at Alternet. Her latest post is an account of her experience testifying before Congress alongside Mike and Kim Bowman, who lost their son to suicide after he returned from Iraq. In the piece she quotes Rep. Cliff Stearns of Florida, who displayed a stunning lack of tact and understanding of the issue when he passed the buck to the Bowman family for their son's death:

"The building up of the self-esteem is the key," he said, "and the parents somehow have to convince him or her that everything is going to be all right, we're going to work through it. And in this case it didn't happen, and so, tragic and sad."

It is precisely because of this tendency to blame the victims that the work that Coleman and the Bowmans do is so important. The hearing ultimately resulted in a dressing down of the head of mental health at the VA by the chair of the Veterans Affairs Committee, Bob Filner, along with the appeal that the VA start listening to the stories of families who have lost loved ones to suicide. Excuses and passing the buck are not going to save any lives.