"They Were Expendable"

Knowing very little about U.S. military life -- thank God! -- I was unaware of the policy that the family of soldiers that commit suicide don't receive a letter of condolences from the President. Wow! This means that the military puts people in extremely stressful situations and, when they snap under all that pressure, there is no acknowledgment of that from the Commander-in-Chief. Boy, talk about being cold-hearted and ungrateful! It's as if the Armed Forces were ashamed of those who take their own lives, for being sick or weak, the antithesis of the macho ideal of a soldier.

Some families have been petitioning the President since 2009 to change that decades-old policy, but Obama is still reviewing the matter. Does it take so long to do the right thing?

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