Push-ups, September 11, and Veteran Deaths

By Gar Smith

A new PR campaign is calling on Americans of all ages to do "22 push-ups in 22 days" to dramatize the fact that, on average, 22 American combat veterans commit suicide every day.

September 11 marks the day when 2,996 Americans lost their lives in attacks on the World Trade Towers and the Pentagon, leading to the start of George W. Bush's War on Terror—an "endless" battle that now has US troops engaged in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen.

By September 11, 2016, 5,588 US soldiers will have committed suicide—nearly twice as many as the number of Americans lost in the 2001 terror attacks. 5,588: That's a lot of push-ups.

(Note: This accounting does not include the thousands of soldiers killed in combat or the hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians whose epitaphs read:  "Collateral damage.")

By the end of 2016, 8,030, soldiers will have committed suicide owing to the unendurable trauma of the "War on Terror."

What can we conclude from these figures? (1) Serving as a US soldier must be one of the world's most demoralizing jobs and, (2) The War on Terror is a bloody failure.