VETERANS IN THE MAKING
Oct 29, 2003
A reservist writes home from Iraq to assure his family that he's okay - but it is obvious he is angry at being placed in a country where friend is indistinguishable from foe and he is being treated as a second-class soldier by regular army troops. They won't tell him when he's going home and his computer repair business is going down the tubes. But, his wife isn't telling him that. He'll find out later, maybe.
"I once believed that I served for a cause: "to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States." Now, I no longer believe; I have lost my conviction, my determination. I can no longer justify my service for what I believe to be half-truths and bold lies. My time is done as well as that of many others with whom I serve. We have all faced death here without reason or justification.
"How many more must die? How many more tears must be shed before America awakens and demands the return of the men and women whose job it is to protect them rather than their leader's interest?" - Tim Predmore, on active duty with the 101st Airborne Division near Mosul, Iraq.
Another soldier stops writing all together. "Why?", his wife asks, then notices the story on page three about Iraqi civilians, some of them children, killed in a firefight between US forces and Iraqi insurgents. She wonders what her husband had to do. She's afraid of who will return to her when its over.
Our soldiers are encountering what soldiers have always encountered; the confusions, uncertainties, the injustices and the violations of spirit that accompany war.
Many a football player, wanting distinction on the field of battle, will pay too high a price for personal glory. He may be someday be that person visiting the VA center, after several broken marriages, episodes of gratuitous violence, bouts of depression, alcoholism. That is, if he makes it and there is a VA center to receive him.
At a time when America has hardly dealt with the human wreckage of her last half-century of war, our country is increasing the debt she owes her most vulnerable citizens - the youth she asks to fight on her behalf.
A few facts about how much we care:
ü Present expenditures on veterans' medical claims has decreased by 36% per person since 1995.
ü There are over 25,000,000 honorably discharged veterans of the Armed Forces of the United States.
ü Over 500,000 veterans have claims pending with the Department of Veterans Affairs for veterans' benefits, Approximately 100,000 of such claims are over one year old with no resolution.
ü Since 1995, the number of VA enrollees for medical care has shot up from 2.9 million to more than 6 million, with total beneficiaries heading to more than 8 million by 2006 and almost 9 million by 2012.
ü From 1995 to now, the VA's annual budget for medical care has climbed only 32 percent, from $16.2 billion to $21.4 billion.
ü Veterans Affairs Department secretary Anthony Principi is talking of suspending enrollment of lower-priority veterans into the health-care system, and capping the number of veterans who can enroll, or limiting annual open enrollment periods.
ü The VA has told its network directors to stop marketing for new patients.
This Veterans Day, we are in the midst of creating a new crop of veterans. We cannot ignore them while we pray at monuments to old conflicts and weep for our long-ago dead.
Veterans Day, originally Armistice Day, commencing the 11th hour of the 11th Day of the 11th month, was intended to celebrate the end of war. Right now - there is nothing to celebrate.
Instead, as a member of Veterans For Peace, I appeal to all citizens to honor the dead and the injured, the currently suffering, by expressing our deep, deep, regret that we asked too much of our youth -- and resolving not to allow anyone to offer them up for sacrifice in our name again.