Another Needless Casualty of War RIP Nigel

If you or someone you know is struggling, the Veterans Crisis Line is available 24/7: call 988 and press 1, text 838255, or visit VeteransCrisisLine.net.

I was going to do an article about the corruption of the Trump family, but I received the following from one of my substack subscribers and felt compelled to share it. We are losing too many young military personnel to suicide… The overwhelming majority are men. My heart aches for the parents and friends of the young man described in the following letter:

Hello Mr Johnson. My name is Pete . I’ve been following you on social media for a long time, as well as your appearances with Danny, Jimmy, Glenn, and the Judge. I know that the mental health of our armed services personnel is a subject of interest to you, so I wanted to reach out to you with a story of what happened on Luke AFB in Phoenix last Sunday, when my son took his own life on the Shoshone Trail at the Grand Canyon on Sunday the 17th.

My son Nigel was in the Air Force, in the 56th CES. He was deployed to Abu Dhabi for about 10 months. He was supposed to return on March 2nd, but the events on Feb 28th (which was also his BIRTHDAY) changed that abruptly, extending his deployment almost six months. He returned about a month ago, to Luke AFB in Arizona.

We live in South Bend, IN. He immediately checked himself into the hospital for PTSD. Despite being a Zoomer, he’d always been resilient, so it terrified me that he did that. He had been released after a week or so, despite his own protestations, and was offered group therapy instead of a counselor. I don’t know ALL of the details, although I am in touch with his girlfriend, also with the 56th CES, and with whom he was deployed. She has more information about that, and will be visiting us next week to share it. .

He was nearing the end of his enlistment, and prior to his last deployment, he had been trying to decide whether to re-enlist. He was just 24 years old, but had been an E5 for a year already, and was being groomed by his Colonel to possibly go to college on an ROTC scholarship to complete the last two years he had on his degree. Nigel had graduated from high school with the 3.9 GPA and and a 1400 on his SAT, but had always appreciated helping me out with construction and repair projects, and always considered himself to be more of a blue collar guy. So remaining enlisted was his plan.

I’m sorry for all this detail, I just know that I have noticed the attention that you pay to these sorts of things whenever you speak to the Judge or to Danny Davis. I know that Nigel is not unique in the trauma that he experienced , and in the decisions he made upon returning. Operational security prevented us from speaking is regularly as we did prior to the war starting, but I do know he was deeply affected by the double tap Tomahawk missile strike in Minab, and was sickened by the genocide in Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon. Nobody, he said, believes in the mission.

If you’ve read this far, thank you for your time. I feel so powerless, and I lack the energy to push the military for how they have been addressing the mental health of our servicemen, so writing to you is the best I can manage to raise awareness of the state of morale in the military. This generation sees through the bovine excrement in ways that mine did not. And while I fear for the state of our military, my greater fear is for the souls of these young men and women. Your voice is so important, and I urge you to continue doing what you do. Thank you.

Peter

I don’t have a simple answer or solution to this epidemic of suicide. All I can do is ask you to be aware and stay in touch with those in your family or circle of friends who might be struggling with PTSD. This has to stop.

I pray God’s peace for Peter and his family as they grapple with this unimaginable loss.

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Colonel Wilkerson and I discuss the latest on Iran with Nima:

Appeared today with Karen Kwiatkowski on the INTEL Roundtable:

Back with Brandon Weichart, filling in for Mario:

I discuss the Charlie Kirk shooting with Sulaiman at the top of the show:

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