Most of you probably know about the tragic gun deaths of two co-eds, one at Auburn, AL, and one at UNC in Chapel Hill, NC. Since both girls were from GA, and both were popular co-eds, authorities at first wondered if they could be related. Apparently they are not.
An arrest was made in the Auburn case on Friday. A 23- year-old man from Smiths, AL, was arrested in a routine traffic stop, and evidence in the car linked him to her slaying. He is also a suspect in the robbery and assault on a child the day before. A mother and her 3-year-old son were leaving the SAM's club in Columbus, GA, when a man, of the same description, jumped out of a car, held a gun to the child's head, and demanded her purse. She, of course, gave it to him, and he sped off.
This man, Courtney Larrell Lockhart, has just returned from a 16-month tour in Iraq. His tearful, distraught, apologetic, mother claims, "My baby has just not been the same since he got back. A mother knows when her son has changed, and he is changed."
Apparently, this young man had not been in trouble before the Iraq tour. What is this war doing to our soldiers? How many others are coming home, not getting the debriefing, the psychological screening and help that perhaps could prevent such tragedies?
Our daily newspaper is full of (anonymous) comments as to how the liberals don't support the troops, the implication being that conservative right-wingers, especially their beloved President, do, because, goodness knows, they surely do stick those magnetic ribbons all over their vehicles. That's all that's needed to support them. And heaven knows that all it takes to further support them is to put a fellow veteran, John McCain, into the White House.
Can we wait until Jan. 20, 2009, to get the Veteran's Affairs office to take seriously the psychological damage that is being done to these returning veterans? Can we wait that long? I know that there have been quite a few other instances of violence by returning vets, such as the brutal murder outside Ft. Benning, GA, of the soldier, that was the inspiration for the movie, "In the Valley of Elah." How many more such tragedies will it take?
Maybe I just wasn't paying attention after Vietnam. Was it this bad then? I know that there was much psychological damage, but was there this much violence?
This concerns me greatly, and I think it is a question that we should be asking of all the candidates. "How do you plan to address this issue?"