KURTENBACH: Canadian Military Suicides

[Oscar]

KURTENBACH: Canadian Military Suicides

January 30, 2014

To the Editor,

Certainly, many Canadians are concerned about the number of military veterans that have taken their own lives.

We have always been told that we owe our freedom to the brave and heroic individuals who made that sacrifice to confront and subdue those whom our politicians have named as our enemy. It is sad to learn that the freedom they were told had been sacrificed for others, they had not been able to find for themselves.

Since 2006, 92 Canadian veterans have taken their own lives. Global News has estimated that for every suicide there has been an equal
number of attempted suicides. These figures are not confined to Canadian statistics. In the last year of the US invasion of Afghanistan, 761 military personnel were killed, while 817 took their own lives.

And who has received the benefit from all this killing?

Certainly not the people of Iraq and Afghanistan. We do not dwell on the millions of human beings that have been killed, maimed or displaced from their homes, and left those two countries in shambles.

Is it reasonable to assume that the only real beneficiaries of this long horrific struggle are the global manufacturers of the weapons of death?

It must be difficult for families and friends of veterans to understand why their loved ones took their own lives.

Why?

Was it because, in their innermost feelings, they could no longer live with what they were required to do to other human beings or to witness the horrors and uselessness of armed struggle against citizens of a foreign land - for reasons that were more or less obtuse?

Would it not be better to again establish Canada's reputation as a nation of peacemakers and peacekeepers?

What we really need is a Department of Peace.

It could operate with a relatively small staff of charismatic globally knowledgeable people, including women, who are totally committed to assist in resolving conflicts anywhere in the world in a peaceful manner - if at all possible - without resorting to killing each other.

The citizens of the world would be proud of Canada!

Leo Kurtenbach,
Saskatoon.
Phone: 306-652-5129