Important links do connect Dallas shooter Micah Johnson and Gavin Long, who also killed and died in Baton Rouge. Both men were soldiers who served combat tours in Afghanistan and Iraq and, in the resulting ambiguity of motive, there have been attempts to link these attacks to Muslim terrorism, with no supporting data.
What is a fact is that both men were African-American, US military veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars; both are now dead. They are a part of the legacy of that war and it is altogether fitting to consider their horrendous actions as suicide by cop. There are 2.7 million US veterans of those wars, an estimated 20 per cent with post-traumatic stress disorder or other emotional scars and another 19 per cent with traumatic brain injury. Since 2003, 104,390 veterans have committed suicide.
This past week, the two men most directly responsible for leading their nations heedlessly into that needless war, former US President George W Bush and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, have emerged to face their countrymen.
The former President, joining with President Barack Obama, spoke eloquently at the memorial for the five fallen police officers in Dallas, his home. He called for "a unity of hope, affection and high purpose" over that of fear.
Unfortunately, it was fear -- not hope or high purpose -- that Bush called forth after the 9/11 terror attacks. A new biography, Bush by Jean Edward Smith, calls Bush out for irresponsibility.
"To argue that by taking the actions that he did, the President kept America safe is meretricious," Smith writes, adding: "The fact is, the threat of terrorism that confronts the United States [today] is in many respects a direct result of Bush's decision to invade Iraq in 2003."
In Blair's case, the Chilcot Report is a long overdue beginning of the need to hold the former Prime Minister to account for his part in the Iraq War. The report is scathing in its criticism of Blair: "We do not agree that hindsight is required," Chilcot said.
"The risks of internal strife in Iraq, active Iranian pursuit of its interests, regional instability and al-Qaeda activity in Iraq were each explicitly identified before the invasion."
And the final devastating indictment: "The UK chose to join the invasion of Iraq before the peaceful options for disarmament had been exhausted. Military action at that time was not a last resort."
Blair's response to the Chilcot findings is as dreary as it is predictable. He says he is proud that he helped to oust Saddam Hussein because the world is better off without him.
In 2006, when the occupation was clearly failing, critics of the Iraqi Freedom enterprise were parried with the disingenuously distorted proposition: "Would you rather we left Saddam Hussein in power?" The proper reply to that false dichotomy is this: "I'd rather that 4424 Americans and 179 Brits and 200,000 Iraqis were still alive."
To those numbers I would add the veteran suicides and post-traumatic stress disorder-related murders (459 at last dubious undercount). The total combat-related fatalities which are the legacy of these two leaders should rightfully include eight police officers and two Iraq/Afghanistan war veterans with untreated emotional injuries.
�Jay Kuten is an American-trained forensic psychiatrist who emigrated to New Zealand for the fly fishing. He spent 40 years comforting the afflicted and intends to spend the rest afflicting the comfortable.
