A veteran’s advocacy group is frustrated with the way Navy Yard
shooter Aaron Alexis has been portrayed in the media, arguing that
linking Alexis’ violence to his military service unfairly stigmatizes
veterans.
“I thought it was particularly lazy. Almost right away, they were
talking about his military service as if it was some sort of excuse.”
Tom Tarantino, retired Army Captain and policy associate with the Iraq
and Afghanistan Veterans of America told The Daily Caller about the
media’s coverage of Alexis in an interview.
Tarantino felt that suggestions that Alexis’ PTSD from 9/11 that lead to his rampage — leaving 12 people
dead and others injured — were especially disappointing and convenient.
“Not only is insulting, but it’s completely factually wrong,”
Taratino said. “It’s so weird that we have this continual perception in
the American zeitgeist of veterans being unstable or ticking time bombs
or veterans with combat related mental health wounds, are prone to these
types of violent acts, and they just aren’t.”
According to the latest report on PTSD, which will be released in
December from the Department of Veterans Affairs, since 9/11 nearly 30
percent of the 834,463 returning veterans from the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan, treated at V.A. hospitals have been diagnosed with PTSD.
Will Simmons, an IAVA leadership fellow and air force veteran with
PTSD, told TheDC that it is unfair to lump Alexis in the same category
as veteran with PTSD.
“I’m the guy next door. I’m the guy that you probably don’t know has
PTSD, but I’m certainly not going to be willing to discuss anything like
that when the first things people think of when they hear ‘PTSD’ and
‘veteran’ is, ‘Oh, he’s going to shoot the place up.’ It’s just too much
of a label,” Simmons said.
According to Simmons, combating ignorance about PTSD is all about
education: “[I]t’s really understanding that PTSD is not a showstopper.
It is not the end of the world. It does not mean that the person is
unstable; it’s just something that this person has to go through.”
Simmons and Tarantino echoed the sentiments of other groups that have
expressed concern that the media conflated his violence with his
military service.
“This is the ‘Rambo’ narrative that was so dangerous and hurtful to
the Vietnam generation come to life,” Phillip Carter, an Iraq War
veteran and senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security in
Washington told Millitary.com.
“It’s a broad brush painting on all of us, and it’s totally unfair,”
Joe Davis said, national spokesman for the Veterans of Foreign Wars, added
to Millitary.com, explaining that veterans rarely resort to violence.
“We need to protect our own image out there. This is not who we are.”
And, according to Tarantino, the fast assumptions do have an effect.
“It’s hard to make sense of something that’s complicated and it maybe
gives people a measure of comfort to try to assign some sort of basic
reasoning to it, but the problem is that the reasoning they’re assigning
to it is wrong, and what it ends up doing is it ends up hurting all the
men and women who are seeking care and treatment,” he said.
“I thought it was particularly lazy. Almost right away, they were
talking about his military service as if it was some sort of excuse.”
Tom Tarantino, retired Army Captain and policy associate with the Iraq
and Afghanistan Veterans of America told The Daily Caller about the
media’s coverage of Alexis in an interview.