re: Active Duty USAF Airman Self Immolates outside Israeli Embassy in Protest

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The Israelis are our only friend in a hostile part of the world that we depend on for our oil and supply a lot of intelligence.

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Nations don’t have friends. They have interests.

Update:

He passed away.

Laugh about it all you want to, get it out of your system, but this airman’s death underlies the rampant problem of veteran suicide everyone continues to pretend isn’t happening. No man in his right mind would do something like this unless they had nothing to live for. If you have seen the actual video of this incident, he just stands there while the flames engulf him and then just drops after his skin has turned black.

This is going to be written off by most conservatives as a political stunt that went awry, but don’t be fooled. This guy had severe mental issues that his chain of command either failed to notice or (more likely) failed to address.

Lot of people here have bought the fighting for freedumb 4 are biggest ally nonsense.

Believing such a lie and then being faced with such a reality of what is really happening might cause you to snap and light yourself on fire

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. If you have seen the actual video of this incident, he just stands there while the flames engulf him and then just drops after his skin has turned black.

This is going to be written off by most conservatives as a political stunt that went awry, but don’t be fooled. This guy had severe mental issues 

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What he has is severe conviction over participating in a genocide.

Methods are of course extreme but that's an extreme burden to bear and a major shock over what we're led to believe. Can't say exactly what we'd do in that situation.

Regardless of method, his reason and cause are true and noble.

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This guy had severe mental issues that his chain of command either failed to notice or (more likely) failed to address.

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^this.

Mental illness is more common than people think. Depression, bipolar disease both can present with suicide attempts.

It is sad for his family and friends.

It is hard to get help when people discount your symptoms

“Anxious? Get over it and drive on!”

“Depressed? We don’t have time for that. Do your job!”

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The Israelis are our only friend

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Friends don’t sell your military technology to the Chicoms.

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Where would his mental issues come from? That is my question.

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I can't speak for him, but my issues started when I was stationed in Hawaii. The first year was excellent but after those first 365 days, I began to become overburdened by a toxic command, toxic work environment, insane deployment schedule, and homesickness. By the time I left Hawaii in the spring of 2019 I was a broken shell of my former self. It wasn't until the end of 2019/beginning of 2020 that I had started to mentally heal from the experience.

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You fellas didn't know what "Zionist" meant

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I always thought Zionist was term used to describe fans of Zion Williamson for the Pelicans.

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This dude could've been a cook in the service. He could have PTSD from cooking?

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Unless you know what you're talking about I would just be quiet. Yeah, being a cook doesn't sound hard on the surface. While I can't speak for the Air Force, in the Navy you aren't just a cook. If you are a CS on a destroyer, you are doing your primary job while also doing many secondary tasks that have nothing to do with your rate:

- You're in charge of doing the ship's laundry
- You have to get qualified to stand armed watches
- You have to get qualified in damage control
- You stand duty (where you can't ever leave the ship) once or twice a week to go along with your normal, 10-hour work day.
- When you stand duty you just aren't on the ship sitting around playing video games. You're also participating in drills and inspections, while also standing a roving watch topside for four hours, armed and armored, in extreme cold or extreme heat depending on the season. And if your duty day falls on a Saturday forget having much of a weekend. You're showing up to the ship at 0730 on Saturday morning and you're not leaving the ship until about 0900 or 1000 on Sunday morning.
- On top of that you are randomly going out to sea for days at a time with very little notice, for bullshite reasons, and are constantly bitched at by the crew for the quality (or lack thereof) of the food you serve them.
- And that's not even including the full, 10-month underways where you have other shite you have to do on top of your primary and secondary duties to keep the ship clean and operating. If you're lucky you might get six hours of sleep once or twice a week. Most Sailors only get about four or five hours on average.
- And when you finally pull into a foreign port for a little R&R, it's a coin toss on whether or not you get to leave the ship depending on if it's your duty section's turn to stand watch. So while you watch your buddies leave the ship to go enjoy a night on the town in Dubai, you're stuck standing an armed watch on the pier or on the ship in the dry, merciless heat of the desert.

That's why retention in the military is so low and why suicidal ideations are so high.

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I remember when some monk in Vietnam did it back .... had to be fifty years or more ago. It accomplished nothing.

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Well, I don’t know about nothing. He did make for a heck of an album cover.