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Army Base Killings Bring Worry
FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. -- The killings of four soldiers' wives at Fort Bragg in just six weeks have forced the Army to take a hard look at the culture of its elite soldiers that considers revealing any hint of domestic problems to be a sign of weakness. In every case, the husband was the suspect and there was marital discord. Three of the men, including two who took their own lives, had returned from Afghanistan as part of the Special Forces. One Special Forces veteran fears there will always be a potential for domestic violence among special operations soldiers because the unwillingness to seek help is deeply ingrained. Special operations soldiers "aren't allowed to have problems. You take care of it yourself," says Eric Haney, 50, an early member of the ultra-secret Delta Force who recently wrote a book about life inside the anti-terrorism unit. The Defense Department has sent a 16-member team to Fort Bragg to examine "a broad array of behavioral health-related issues that could have led to the slayings." The Pentagon also announced this past week that soldiers in Afghanistan would undergo mental screening before returning home. Speculation about the causes of the killings has run the gamut from the stress of combat to psychotic side-effects from the anti-malaria drug Lariam, which is given to soldiers in Afghanistan. But not all of the soldiers involved in the killings at Fort Bragg saw combat, and thousands of other soldiers at other bases have taken Lariam and not killed their wives. Studies of the violence rate in military families are inconclusive. Some put the rate at two to five times that of the civilian population, while others found the two rates closer to equal when the racial and age makeup of military families is considered.

Our culture trains young men to be killers and then we wonder why they kill.

posted by West 4:49 PM