Terrifying

Although the pace of deployments has not yet eased for the Army, because forces formerly planned for Iraq are heading to Afghanistan, the intensity of combat in Iraq has declined tremendously. While Afghan combat intensity is certainly high, we simply don't have that many troops there compared to Iraq. By any logic, the stress of being at war has gone down for our troops over the last year.

But suicides are up for the Army last year. The Marines, too, are seeing an increase. And last month's Army toll had best be a spike and not a trend:

The Army said 24 soldiers are believed to have committed suicide in January alone -- six times as many as killed themselves in January 2008, according to statistics released Thursday.

The Army said it already has confirmed seven suicides, with 17 additional cases pending that it believes investigators will confirm as suicides for January.

If those prove true, more soldiers will have killed themselves than died in combat last month. According to Pentagon statistics, there were 16 U.S. combat deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq in January.

"This is terrifying," an Army official said. "We do not know what is going on." ...

Suicides for Marines were also up in 2008. There were 41 in 2008, up from 33 in 2007 and 25 in 2006, according to a Marines report.

Suicides are no reason not to use the Army or Marines. No more than combat casualties are a reason not to use them. But the Army needs to react to this recent trend and not assume it is a spike.

To be sure, the Russian army would be envious of our current elevated rate, but the Russians are no standard of comparison that we want to measure ourselves against.

Nor is it a comfort to note that the Army's rate matches the civilian suicide rate now. Young, healthy men should not have reason to kill themselves.

We need to make sure they know they have a reason to live.

And seriously, why is the stress affecting troops just when the stress is significantly lower?