One of Brown’s friends offered to stop by his townhouse before heading over. The door was unlocked. The lights were off. On speakerphone with the others, he searched the house, then stepped outside and looked through the window of Brown’s car. He found him sitting in the driver’s seat, dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Everyone on the call heard the moment he realized what he was seeing. On the other end of the line, several friends fell to their knees sobbing.
Brown’s death was one of hundreds in the past decade that the Air Force has quietly logged and filed away as another isolated tragedy. While Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth obsesses over the supposed “softening” and “weakening” of American troops, the Pentagon is concealing the scale of a real threat to the lives of his military’s active-duty members: a suicide crisis killing hundreds of members of the U.S. Air Force.
Data The Intercept obtained via the Freedom of Information Act shows that of the 2,278 active-duty Air Force deaths between 2010 and 2023, 926 — about 41 percent — were suicides, overdoses, or preventable deaths from high-risk behavior in a decade when combat deaths were minimal.
If you think that’s terrible and sad, wait till you hear about the people who join the air force for the opportunity to kill civilians in foreign countries.
Remember that time earlier this year when they bombed civilians in Yemen, waited for rescue to show up, then bombed the rescue teams?
Remember those times earlier this month when they murdered a bunch of random boaters in the Caribbean?
But keep telling me why they’re poor widdle imperialist babies who deserve my sympathy because when their conscience finally caught up to them, these supposedly brave and fearless soldiers decided to take the easy and cowardly way out instead of lifting a finger to rectify even a fraction of the suffering they dealt on the world. That’s supposed to make me respect them more, and not less?