Lisa Leitz, an assistant professor of Sociology at Hendrix College and the wife of a U.S. Naval aviator currently deployed in Afghanistan, was interviewed on CNN this morning. Her commentary on the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan is posted here. Leitz says the toll the war is taking on military families and the lack of progress being made should lead Pres. Barack Obama to change course.
In the eight years of America’s war in Afghanistan, 911 military families lost their mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters (and an additional 4,357 lost loved ones in Iraq). October 2009 was in fact the deadliest month of the war in all eight years. Tens of thousands of military families battle with the daily difficulties of war injuries. Friends of mine have had to quit jobs or school in order to care for loved ones, and they continue to struggle to secure the care these veterans deserve. An estimated 500,000 veterans of Afghanistan and Iraq wrestle with PTSD, and their loved ones fight daily battles with an overburdened Veterans’ Administration and to hold their families together.