The wounded warrior debate – how to treat casualties of our wars

Larry Kummer, Editor

16 years ago

Summary: As our long war concludes its 9th year the stress builds on our men and women in the armed services. And on the people who care for them. Largely hidden from view, on rare occasions these issues come into view.

(1) “Former Pentagon personnel official: The warrior units are holding tanks for misfits“, Noel Koch , blog of Foreign Policy, 16 June 2010 — Key points:

“Our men and women in uniform today represent the finest fighting force ever fielded. The only problem? There aren’t enough of them.”
“These desperate attempts at patching institutional shortfalls have human consequences: spouses are deployed multiple times as marriages falter and fail and children grow up with a parent they scarcely know; soldiers take their lives in record numbers, their deaths lamely assigned to “relationship problems”; and, most tellingly, recruiting NCOs commit suicide because they can’t bear the brutal stress put on them to bring in more people when qualified people are unwilling to join the military. The Army says it is meeting its recruiting quotas, but many of those recruited are unfit for service.”
The wounded warrior program (the warrior transition units, WTUs) have become dumping grounds for soldiers who never should have been recruited. Most have never seen combat.
“These, in aggregate, are the results of going to war with insufficient manpower. These are the evidences of the failure of the All Volunteer Force. There was a time when the draft bound our nation together. Many believe that any attempt to restore it today could risk tearing us apart. Still, more and more people, quietly, are coming to the conclusion that careful consideration has to be given to restoring the draft.”

(2) “Noel Koch responds to General Cheek, but focuses on the plight of caregivers“, blog of Foreign Policy, 17 June 2010 — Key points:

“I learned early that the surveys used by DOD and, I am assuming, by the military services, are so primitive as to be useless.”
“These articles focused on the full array of caregivers: family members, the Recovery Care Coordinators … , Chaplains (one of them took his life); and cadre. What was striking was the impact of involvement on the caregivers. They are breaking, or broken.”

About the author: Noel Koch served 6 years in Vietnam and has extensive experience in defense and security affairs; bio. He was deputy undersecretary of defense for wounded warrior care and transition policy, dismissed in April 2010 (see this Huffington Post article).

(3) Other volleys in the debate

Rebuttal by Brigadier General Gary H. Cheek (Assistant Surgeon General of Warrior Care and Transition, and Commander of the Warrior Transition Command; bio)
“Here’s how screwed up the Army’s Warrior Transition Units are: Genuinely sick soldiers try to get out of using them“, Thomas E. Ricks, blog of Foreign Policy, 17 June 2010
“Koch responds to General Cheek: 90% of WTUers are not ‘wounded warriors’“, blog of Foreign Policy, 18 June 2010
“How to fix the Wounded Warrior program: A Marine’s perspective“, Thomas E. Ricks, blog of Foreign Policy, 18 June 2010
“Thousands Of Soldiers Unfit For War Duty“, Politics Daily (AOL News), 5 July 2010 — “In an unmistakable sign that the Army is struggling with exhaustion after 9 years of fighting, combat commanders whose units are headed to Afghanistan increasingly choose to leave behind soldiers who can no longer perform, putting additional strain on those who still can. The growing pool of “non-deployable” soldiers make up roughly 10% of the 116,423 active-duty soldiers currently in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

(4) For more information