Gordon Clay here. Eighteen U.S. vets commit suicide every day. That’s the latest statistic of one of the most underreported costs of our wars. It adds up to more than are actually being killed in all of our current ongoing wars.

How damaging is the emotional toll for our men who must suppress the feelings that connect them to their humanity in order to fight wars to support a profitable agenda of the military-industrial-prison-media complex.

It’s still true that a major measure of manhood in our culture is a man’s willingness to go off somewhere to kill other men or be killed by other men. And this kill-or-be-killed agreement for something abstract like “the American way,” or “freedom,” or “the country” constitutes proof for many that they did live up to what it is to be real men.

Internalizing this kill-or-be-killed ideal teaches men that their lives are important only to the extent that they sacrifice them at work, in sports, or in war, for their families, for the team, for the nation.

Sympathetic emotions must be stuffed down as deeply as possible to get men to become fighters in life. The hurt, fear, and confusion all humans feel cannot bubble up or it will destroy the missions assigned to manhood.

Our men are suffering post-traumatic stress disorder not just because of what they witnessed but because they are human beings who are being asked to do something far out of touch with their humanity. And like it.

Women, a question. How would it feel if you were taught all your life to be prepared to kill other women. When men kill men it's called "Male Privilege" and it sucks.