Posted on 11/20/2012 8:34:10 AM PST by kristinn
CALLAWAY — Libby Busbee pounded on the window of her son’s maroon Dodge Charger as he sat in the driveway of their home earlier this year. Locked inside his car, U.S. Army Spc. William Busbee sat with a .45-caliber gun pointed to the side of his head.
“Look at me,” his mother cried out as she tried to get her son’s attention. “Look at me.”
He wouldn’t look.
He stared out the front windshield, distant, Busbee said, relating the story from an apartment complex in Callaway.
“I kept yelling, ‘Don’t you do this. Don’t do it.’ He wouldn’t turn his head to look at me,” she said, looking down at the burning cigarette in her hand.
A 911 call was made. The police pulled her away from the car.
William, Libby Busbee’s 23-year-old son, was talking with a police officer when he fired a shot through the front windshield of his car, according to the police report.
The police recoiled. William rapped on the window in apparent frustration, the report indicated.
Then the second shot was heard.
“I knew that was the one,” said Libby Busbee.
William Busbee took his life in March with his mother and sisters looking on.
Casualty of war?
William Busbee was no casualty of the war in Afghanistan. He was a casualty of his own mind, his mother said.
Libby Busbee bowed her head, talking as she sat next to a bird-of-paradise on the front porch of her apartment. She could no longer live in the home on 12th Street.
“They wouldn’t let me talk to him,” she said, referring to the day her son shot himself. “I know if he was able to see me he wouldn’t have done it.”
According to a Veterans Affairs report this spring, a veteran commits suicide every 80 minutes. More than 6,500 suicides have occurred since the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan began. For every service member who dies in battle, 25 veterans die by their own hands.
According to a Pentagon report, more American active service members have killed themselves in the first six months of 2012 than in the first six months of any of the previous 11 years, The Associated Press reported.
The report reveals 154 service members killed themselves in the first 155 days of 2012 alone. The number of deaths by suicide is 50 percent higher than combat deaths in Afghanistan during the same period and an 18 percent increase over active service member suicides in the first six months of 2011.
And, while only 1 percent of Americans have served in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, veterans of these conflicts represent 20 percent of all suicides in the United States, the VA reported.
SNIP
I haven’t heard much news from Afghanistan in the last few years. But I got hold of a series of books on the war written by James Christ. Great books about the men of the 10th Mountain Divisin and the Embedded trainers (mostly National Guard). Understrentght, outnumbered, constant sniper fire, ambushes, IEDs and attacks on their outposts. And to top it off they have the absolute worst ROEs imaginable. Also read the Dakota Myers story, a US Marine who was awarded the MOH, it will make you sick. Then maybe you can understand why these guys are fucked up when they come home. These guys were constantly on patrols and their commanders broke every lesson learned from the past wars. hell they had to, they were working out of small outpost scattered all over a large area in the most dangerous areas of Afghanistan.
I recommend these books,about 10 of them, to everyone who wants to know what your soldiers and marines are up against in this war. God bless, we don’t deserve them.
This is what it means to live in a culture of death.
the neighbors kid joined and I asked him about it and he admitted it was easy, he wants his school loans paid off and how he gets many good deals.
He has no love for the country, none at all.
Now he got his girl pregnant, she had the baby and right away he banged out another, all the time crying he has no money.
Lok at those 4 marines out on the west coast some months ago.
They scammed the marines into getting married quarters,
Dont know why our side thinks every military member is a grade A patriotic person, they are not.
I know guys who left who are nothing but scam artists, one is a big drug dealer who plied his trade whilst serving
“Once they have seen the horrors of war, maybe it is too much.”
Maybe you meant ...
Once they seen the horrors of the Commander in Chief and the evils of gay aggressive behavior going unchecked, it is too much. Not what most of them signed up for.
There is also the wave of spouses back home filing for divorce while they are overseas that doesn’t help.
I have kids, two of them are boys, one turned 15 last week.
I see the kids about him, who go to his school who are in the ROTC.
I see my yongest when playing soccer and the boys who play with him.
I swear we have raised boys for the most part of soft little mamby pamby band aid for the boo boo cry babies.
We make it easy for them to join and some of who I see serving on the base here stuns me.
How the hell does a 200 pound woman at 5 foot 5 get to join?
The left wanted cross dressers, homosexuals, tulip lickers in the military.
FOr some reason the left hates tough, physical men who can fight and actually like fighting.
Time our side raised our sons to be future men and understand the military is not what they think it is
Not to mention we’re increasingly getting gang-members in our military.
What an utterly ridiculous thing to say.
How do you propose that I, a mother in her late middle years, could make sure my son doesn't get raped?
My oldest wants marine recon or navy seal, and I;ve told him there is no way in hell he will join whilst these PC policies are in place and obama is President especially after Libya and how oabma dealt with that
After a young person is 18, a parent does not have much control over whether he or she enlists. I would have vastly preferred that my son go to college and enter the Corps as an officer--four years from now, when Obama will be out of office. I could not stop him from enlisting; he's 18 and legally a grown man.
But I'm very proud of him and can hardly wait to see him graduate!
yep we have gang members who join, there was a report about how hispanic gang members join to get training and then use that after their 4 year stint.
We want to get rid of reduce suicides then make it tougher for people to join, and then get those who shoudl be in will get in and stop the PC nonsense and social changes
Yep, and generalizations—lots of generalizations. Shrinks and social workers like to lump the feeble minded in with those who’ve had inner ear injuries from percussions and/or field exhaustion (exhaustion that most civilians never know—hard labor with virtually no sleep for weeks).
[I was only National Guard, BTW, with no hardship tours. But I was combat (combat).]
I will pray for your son and all those in our military. As a country we ask a great deal of them, we need to be there for them in any way we can.
Oh...heh, heh. Want that “thousand yard stare?” Live outdoors for at least a week or about a month to be sure. Don’t go in any building, tent or vehicle at all during the whole time. Keep very busy for at least 20-23 hours a day. No TV, no radios, no Internet gadgets, no colorful clothing or colorful anything in sight—only “earth” colors allowed. Voila: bush fever, thousand yard stare.
If Bush were president this would be all over the news. 0bama is president, and the media hide it.
“I know guys who left who are nothing but scam artists, one is a big drug dealer who plied his trade whilst serving”
I saw something happen several times in criminal courts about 10 years ago that would interest you. Offenders who had ‘violent records’ who were turned away by the military because of those records. Other offenders who were welcome because of their ‘technical skills and trainability’ - were in fact a group of embezzling employees in one case, fraud in another, and identity theft and falsification of public documents in a third. They were literally smirking as they were sworn in in a warm and fuzzy ceremony to show how rehabilitated they were.
The violent offenders would have made better soldiers after some attitude adjustments from the DI. Far better than the little frauds.
I wonder if it could have anything to do with risking one’s life while thinking he was fighting for something, then coming home to a broken, divided America that has become a welfare state? Crappy economy, no job to come home to, people bickering about free stuff, the Constitution you thought you were defending in shreds. What WERE you fighting for that whole time?? Not to mention that this whole generation of millenials is kinda shaky to begin with.
19,000 rapes last year on men, how many went unreported and men lived in shame from that rape?
You as a mother cannot do anything to stop him being raped and we know as my son woudl never say if they were.
This is obama’s military, cross dressing, homosexuals, mamby pamby guys joining, overweight women joining
all because of PC, they want minorities, homosexuals, hispanics which is good if they;re qualified, some whites and others are not and that is the problem today, they join up
I wish you all the best as a mother.
My oldest son just turned 15 and I;ve brought him up to be a good conservative but I will put my foot down if he wants to join whilst the military is like it is, and obama or the left is in charge
Just look at Libya and how that was dealt with.
This admin does not care one bit about your son or my sons life and they lie to the parents face with out a care
I honestly believe you’re right. People say it must be the horrors, but my guess is that today’s horrors of Afghanistan, Iraq, etc. were/are no more than WWI, WWII Korea, or even Viet Nam.
The difference is ROEs, hatred of our military by Democrats (well, they did this during VN, too), and a determined purpose to demoralize and debauch our military.
Frankly, if my son, or daughter, or grand children wanted to join our military, I’d advise them NO.
agree.
In my unit, many of us were fighters, come from broken homes and we made the military our familiy.
We liked to fight,we liked to get stuck in , we enjoyed the good fight and when we were fighting the enemy we were fighting for each other.
Today we get people joining for the wrong reasons and we have PC destroying the military.
“Time our side raised our sons to be future men and understand the military is not what they think it is.”
Totally agree. There are still some aspects of the military that are tough men but they are surrounded by liberal PC BS that they cannot escape. In fact, those manly men are hated by the PC military and their demise is plotted every step of the way. Years ago when I served at least the manly men were respected if not at all understood. Today, every PC kid in the military is narcissistic enough to want to be respected like the manly men so they put down the doers and claim hero status for themselves. If they don’t get hero status they have these little meltdowns.
If I had two boys their age I would raise them to be men and to go on to aspects of their own interests and forget the military for now. I would teach them many skills of being men and hope they go on to continue their life as adults. There are simply too many liberal challenges to that now.
Why not go back to the way our military is trained? Being separated from all normal life and trained to only depend on the guy next to them with a gun. When they get out of the military they don’t know how to relate or trust those that next to them that does not have a gun in their hand. It is not that those now around them don’t understand. It is that they will not believe they understand.
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