Aaron Glantz wrote an article in the New York Times on Oct. 16 that illuminated the gross number of veterans returning home dying from preventable causes. A day later Tom Brokaw called on America’s political candidates to start talking about the wars, which led Bob Herbert to ask the citizens of this country to put down their iPods, hobbies and political ideologies and look at the way we’re caring for and treating our troops.

In the mean time, veterans on the ground desperately seek to say something and be heard about all of this. Yet being the problem seems to require our silence. As if we’re children in the corner awaiting Mother and Father’s debate over what’s next.

Why? Do our voices not count in this conversation?

Of those involved, certainly the men and women most intimate with the issues have an idea about possible solutions.

Publishing op-ed after op-ed by those who have never served during conflict seldom confronts the issue with genuine understanding.

Perhaps seeing us as objects of the problem is the cause for our voices being muted.

Sure, there are powerful organizations like Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America that advocate and speak on our behalf. But when they’re busy providing us with incentives to consume alcohol, our voices are buried even deeper under the mask that someone is helping.

In Glantz’s article, a Marine veteran who attends University of California, Berkeley is quoted saying, “[these deaths] don’t’ have to happen.”

What he means is, if you stop thinking about which drug to prescribe, what overbooked psychologist has the next appointment or the next campaign phrase that could win him, you may catch a glimpse into something helpful.

The most powerful prescriptions a veteran could be written is community.

Community among veterans is as old as war itself. When you place a soldier into the group, survival methods are learned and life-saving ways of communicating are born.

The mission of coming home, however, is a task we aren’t much used to.

The violence and hardships we endure in combat give rise to a complexity of illnesses, and, when met with the America that Brokaw and Herbert spoke of, they’re consistently strengthened.

This new mission is hard for us.

We can’t communicate like we used to, some seem not to care, and they call it a benefit to sit and talk with someone paid to do so.

The mission of coming home demands that we be with other veterans, not to merely “cope” with ourselves and the world we live in, but in gaining new perspective. To learn the language of the new mission we’re on, together.

This is the relief we seek, and it has become hard to find these days.

With it, we have a better opportunity to piece through the crisis of coming home to those concerned with Lady Gaga, Fantasy Football and political campaigns.

If you want to confront the issues among veterans today, speak of community combined with care.