Matthew Hoh, a former Marine Corps company commander in Anbar Province who later redeployed to Afghanistan with the State Department and resigned his post in protest over U.S. policy, believes that nothing has laid bare the priorities of our nation so clearly as the sequester.

“The most vulnerable are getting hurt, while the privileged, the well-to-do are being protected,” says Hoh, now a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy. “We’re choosing to prioritize profits of corporations, or revitalize weapons systems that don’t matter any more, as opposed to making sure soldiers get the care they need when they come home.”

Hoh points to the fact that Department of Defense civilian health care workers were forced to reduce their hours by 20 percent until recently. While Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel reduced the furlough days required for the remainder of the fiscal year ending September 30, he also said that he “cannot be sure what will happen” under sequestration for Fiscal Year 2014 which begins October 1. The Pentagon will be required to cut 40 percent more than the $37 billion that was mandated this year.

To Hoh, the reduction in furlough days comes much too late and the damage has already been done.

“We’ve got a suicide epidemic with record numbers of suicides among military personnel every year,” says Hoh. “Guys coming home with PTSD and depression, and then the clinicians working with them were only available four days a week instead of five.”

Indeed, Stars and Stripes recently reported that Walter Reed National Medical Center had reduced beds in the in-patient mental health section from 28 to 22; an internal memo encouraged “dispositions/discharges as soon as possible” and the western Army medical region alone had delayed 10,000 routine patient appointments in the first month of furloughs due to staffing shortages.

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