Who's Safeguarding the Guard? PA Governor says Guard "wasted" by repeated tours

This is from a devastating article by retired Air Force Lt. Col. William Astore about the wearing-down and hollowing-out of the US military:

Governor Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania noted last month on Meet the Press that "our troops are tired and worn out. [With respect to the] Pennsylvania National Guard, most of our guardsmen have been to either Iraq [or] Afghanistan, over 85 percent, and many of them have gone three or four times and they're wasted."

What does "wasted" mean? It means this:

Suicides have hit record highs in the Army. Cases of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and depression, having reached an alarming 300,000 in 2008, according to Invisible Wounds of War, a RAND study, continue to escalate, constituting a mental health crisis for the Army. Traumatic brain injuries from IEDs and other explosive shocks in our war zones, difficult to diagnose and even more difficult to treat, may already exceed 300,000, another health crisis exacerbated by a lack of treatment available to veterans. Divorce rates among active duty troops continue to climb. An epidemic of domestic violence and crime has been linked to returning veterans and to the difficulty of readjusting to "normal" life after months, or years, in combat zones.

Who's standing up for these war-weary soldiers? Not the President, who's sending another 30,000 off to Afghanistan. Not the Congress, which just voted another $636 billion to keep the wars going.

Who's standing up for the people who are taken from our communities to be fed into the war machine, again and again and again, until they are finally used up?

Here, once again, is evidence of the urgent need for resistance, at the state level, to the misuse and over-use of our National Guard troops. The people who enlist in the Guard make a solemn commitment to serve the people of our state - what commitment do we owe them in return? Can we - at the very least - commit that they will never again be used in an illegal war?

Wisconsin's "Bring the Guard Home - It's the law!" campaign is working to enact legal protections that would safeguard the people who guard us, by requiring the Governor to review any Federal call-up for our state's Guard troops, and to refuse any deployment determined to be unlawful. The bill that would enact these legal safeguards, AB 203, is scheduled for a hearing before the State Assembly's Veterans and Military Affairs Committee on February 9. Organizers are in the process of lining up a roster of veterans and people who work with veterans to testify about the toll that repeated deployments have taken on Guard members and their families.

Nominate a speaker:
The "Bring the Guard Home - It's the Law!" campaign is seeking nominations for speakers for the Feb. 9 Veterans Affairs hearing on Assembly Bill 203.
Some key voices that we seek to include:
-- Members of the Guard and their families
-- Social-service workers who have worked with Guard members and Guard families, to speak about the stresses caused by repeated deployments.
-- Employers who have had to deal with the disruption of losing key employees to Guard deployments.

Stand up for Wisconsin's Guard on Feb. 9:
Please join us in Madison to fill the hearing room and remind the members of the Assembly's Veterans and Military Affairs Committee that we have not forgotten the sacrifices that our Guard troops are making.

Please contact WNPJ Program Director Steve Burns, 608-250-9240, outreach@wnpj.org if you plan to attend the hearing or want to nominate a person to testify at the hearing. Transportation and lodging willl be arranged for those requesting assistance.