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enlarge Credit: www.good.is We talk about the trillions of dollars added to the deficit because of our occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan…but how can you monetize this very real and very painful cost ? For the second year in a row , more American soldiers—both enlisted men and women and veterans—committed suicide than were killed in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Excluding accidents and illness, 462 soldiers died in combat, while 468 committed suicide. A difference of six isn’t vast by any means, but the symbolism is significant and troubling. In 2009, there were 381 suicides by military personnel, a number that also exceeded the number of combat deaths. Earlier this month , military authorities announced that suicides amongst active-duty soldiers had slowed in 2010, while suicides amongst reservists and people in the National Guard had increased. It was proof, they said, that the frequent psychological screenings active-duty personnel receive were working, and that reservists and guardsmen, who are more removed from the military’s medical bureaucracy, simply need to begin undergoing more health checks. This new data, that American soldiers are now more dangerous to themselves than the insurgents, flies right in the face of any suggestion that things are “working.” Even if something’s working, the system is still very, very broken. One of the problems hindering the military’s attempt to address soldier suicides is that there’s no real rhyme or reason to what kind of soldier is killing himself. While many suicide victims are indeed afflicted with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder after facing heavy combat in the Middle East, many more have never even been deployed. Of the 112 guardsmen who committed suicide last year, more than half had never even left American soil. It sickens me. Every week as I do the In Memoriam post, I read so many of the service members official cause of death as “non-combat related” and my heart grieves, because I know that’s likely a suicide. All those months of separation, the unrelenting stress of being under fire, the inability to adjust back to a non-combat life. It’s all a vicious cycle. But there are people trying to be part of the solution