Operation Recovery: Right To Heal

This Past Wednesday Operation Recovery: Right to Heal Tour rolled through Atlanta. The tour is part of a new Iraq Veteran's Against War Project.

The goal of this tour is to raise awareness about Operation Recovery and service members fight for the right to heal from trauma. 

Large portions of our military members and veterans are suffering from Military Sexual Trauma (MST), Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), and/or Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) yet their right to heal is violated on a mass scale.

While traumatized service members have been forced to deploy against the best interest of their health and well being throughout the Global War on Terror now with the return of troops from Iraq the military is trying to skirt it’s responsibilities to care for service members. Military leaders and service providers are giving inadequate care, pushing improper diagnoses,  and forcing thousands of service members to leave the military with no care or benefits by pursuing punitive discharges for troops who really need medical and mental health care.

Fort Hood. Texas, the Army’s largest base has been hit especially hard with trauma. Regular and repeated deployments over the past 10 years have left soldiers their particularly vulnerable to traumatic injuries leading Fort Hood to have the highest suicide rate (22) by far over any other military instillation.

Veteran Organizers who have worked with active duty troops at Fort Hood as well as former Fort Hood soldiers will embark on the Right to Heal Tour, sharing the stories of the work happening at Fort Hood and our upcoming Summer Outreach Drive. Operation Recovery organizers will be out at Fort Hood all summer long meeting active duty troops, collecting testimonies, and building power to take on Fort Hood’s General Campbell and stop the violation of service members right to heal.

Public support is essential; through supporters bombarding General Campbell with thousands of emails and post cards we were able to win a “virtual town hall meeting” in January. Now we need to take this further to insure General Campbell not only hears what his soldiers need but also does something about it. Stand with us for soldiers’ right to heal.

American Friends Service Committee is proud to support the important work of IVAW, and we hope to bring the tour back to Atlanta in the next few months.