Veterans Groups Worry About Negative Stereotyping

The gunmen in both the Dallas and Baton Rouge police officer shootings had a history of military service, bringing to light a scenario troubling to veterans and veterans’ groups: Will the stereotype of the deranged vet — a “Rambo” gone rogue — emerge in the resulting analysis of these horrific events?

One Vietnam veteran and a father of four told Lifezette, “I feel the media rushes to judgment whenever a veteran or military person is involved in a crime in some way — they can’t wait to point out that a veteran was involved. Then they try to paint everyone with the same broad brush, and it’s wrong — and unfair.”

The suicide rate among veterans has surged 35 percent since 2001.

In truth, the larger worry is not veterans harming another, but veterans harming themselves. The Department of Veterans Affairs released findings on July 7 of a recently completed study examining the death records from every state of more than 55 million veterans from 1979 to 2014. The results are troubling: The suicide rate among veterans has surged 35 percent since 2001. The suicide rate for women who have served has increased a whopping 85 percent in that same amount of time.

“I have the sense that our vets are canaries in the coal mine,” said Joseph Graca, a former Veterans Affairs clinical psychologist who is currently in private practice in Minnesota. “There’s so much rift in our society and in our culture, and I think that’s why we have the sky-high suicide rates. We come back and we have a society that is unable to provide a community for healing.”

Veterans are overwhelmingly more likely to run toward trouble than to cause it — and seem almost hard-wired to serve. If there is a stereotype of veterans, that would be more the more accurate one.

“Many EMTs and police officers are former veterans,” said Graca. “In the events in Dallas, police ran towards the mayhem — that’s classic military training. And that’s a veteran.”

Neither of the gunmen in the recent massacres saw combat. There is also no indication that either suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), according to multiple reports.

Micah Johnson, the Dallas assailant, was in the Army Reserve from 2009-2015, and had only basic weapons training. He acquired much of his tactical training outside the military, according to The New York Times.

Gavin Long, the Baton Rouge shooter, was a data network specialist in the Marine Corps. He deployed to the Middle East — as did Johnson — but was not involved in combat operations. He divorced his wife, changed his name to “Cosmo Setepenra,” accused the government of placing him under surveillance, and decried systematic racism against African-Americans, according to SFGate.com.

“We come back and we have a society that is unable to provide a community for healing.”

Both assailants were also African-Americans who held bitterness toward our government — even in Obama’s America of hope and change.

In Long’s mother’s words, her son became “a hermit” and resentful toward the government, according to SFGate.com. Johnson’s mother said of her son that “it may be that the ideal that he thought of our government, of what he thought the military represented — it just didn’t live up to his expectation.”

“To blame war service and not this culture we live in for any violence that grows in a person’s heart seems like denial of the highest order,” said one Boston veteran. “To examine the culture and the strain the current administration is putting on Americans economically and socially seems a better use of time.”

Graca agreed with that. “Moral injury is at the heart of veterans’ issues. We believe in authority and have a strong moral foundation, and it’s eroding in this country. Many issues stem from that — not from service.”

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Veterans’ groups wanting to cast off any negative stereotypes have joined together in the last several years in an informal partnership called the veteran’s empowerment movement, according to The Times. They hold volunteering trips, organize disaster relief teams, and have exercise groups to re-engage veterans.

In a survey the group conducted recently, more than 80 percent of individuals aid that veterans suffer from mental health issues. “Recent events only reinforce those perceptions,” Bill Rausch, a veteran who heads nonprofit Got Your 6, told The Times. “If the American people are afraid of us instead of seeing us as an asset, it makes it more difficult for everyone.”

Said the veteran and father from New York of his real-life experience, “The vast majority of veterans have served their country with distinction. They come back home to lead patriotic lives that embrace honor, goodness, hard work, and solid American values.”