How a Grateful Nation Takes Care of Vets
You have heard it from President Bush and countless politicians a thousand times, probably more ( I slightly paraphrase )”We appreciate the sacrifices made by the men and women in uniform and the sacrifices made by their families”. With the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan continuing to rage it is now a standard part of most politician’s speeches.
But how does this appreciation translate into action and deeds? I wrote an article a few days ago about the treatment received by all too many returning wounded warriors. Now we have another story about the difficulties all too many Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans are having adapting to civilian life after serving their country. With the war dragging on and with many vets having served multiple tours of duty in Iraq combat zones you can be assured that PTSS ( posttraumatic stress disorder ) is going to become a major public health issue over the next many years.
I will personally verify that PTSS is real and can for years be a disruptive influence on those affected by it. I was in Vietnam in 1967 and 1968. I was in Danang when the Tet offensive occurred. At the time the MCB 133 battalion of US Navy Seabees that I served with were short timers. With less than 30 days to go to complete our deployment we were subjected to nightly close by hostile activity including rocket attacks that seemed to whistle right though our hooches. The sleep depravation and stress that this put us under at the conscious and unconscious level was enormous.
Many years later, in 1982, I was happily living in Hawaii. By chance, really, I turned on the TV and saw the ceremony of the dedication of the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington. D.C. Â taking place with live coverage. Suddenly, without warning, I was awash in memories that I had suppressed for 14 years. I was rather amazed when I found myself crying uncontrollably.
Was PTSS at work so many years later? I think so.
What will be the final cost of our unwise war and occupation of Iraq? No one really knows. We can estimate and compute the cost of the tanks, Humvees, automatic weapons, bullets , mortars, body armour, training, fuel, food, tents, and on and on. Those costs are now running at about nine billion a month and on an upward slope. The costs are actually much higher as so many services are now contracted out to firms like Dick Cheney’s favorite, Halliburton, and do not show up in the official war cost figures.
As horrendous as those costs are in dollar terms the worst costs will be in the broken lives faced by so many of the returning veterans. Those costs will be with us for the next 50 to 60 years. I’m confident that my experience in Vietnam pales beside that of our troops fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq.
I can’t begin to imagine what it must be like to serve two and three rotations, each being for one year or more, in Iraq within a four year time frame. With many of our forces in Iraq coming from National Guard units, usually more mature men who have been employed in the civilian job market for a few years, the disruption to their careers and private lives has to be catastrophic.
For the young solders, marines, sailors, and airmen, who have been trained by the world’s best military to be killers, sorry moms, but remember that is what war is all about at ground zero in combat zones, the transition back to civilian like will not be easy.
They will have witnessed too much of the dark side of life and death to quickly blend back into their former identities and existence. Some will not be able to make the transition. In effect the war will have cost them their lives.
One debate that congress and the 2008 Presidential candidates should be addressing right now is how will a grateful nation face up to it’s responsibilities to take better care of those who gave up their freedom, (in the military you are not free, you follow orders), youth, innocence, and in some cases one or more eyes, limbs, and health to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan.
It’s time that the politicians realize that we as a nation own the veterans more than political slogans.
Another closing thought. If the true cost of wars can not be calculated perhaps we should be more careful at engaging in them. Â
[...] Unfortunately, the warriors fighting for the empire and the poor souls who do become wounded and end up recuperating at the facility have very little, if any, control over their fate. I recently wrote an article about the Washington Post’s story about conditions at Walter Reed Now the Washington Post has published a follow up story which states that the poor conditions in the out patient facility have been known about by top officials since at least 2003 without corrective action being taken. [...]