Sad but True

It is a well known fact that America’s armed forces can and will deploy anywhere in the world at a moment’s notice.  Whether it be to Iraq, Somalia, Japan, Iwo Jima or Haiti; American men and women are ready to go boots dry against any force human or nature.  The American people know this and accept it as their way of life.  Sure there are protesters and fanatics, even scholars that have their own two cents to offer. Generally speaking though, the country accepts it as how we are.  American leaders know it too, and have no issues sending these men and woman to take on dictators and catastrophes sometimes again insurmountable odds.  For a while we all wave our flags and shout “Go USA!”  Then where does everyone go?

During WWII Americans saved cans and changed production in factories across the country.  People bought War Bonds to help fund our mission.  Then the war finish and the nation partied.  What happened after 11% of the nation fought to win the war?  What happened after the 12 years that 4.3% of Americans fought tooth and nail in the jungles of Vietnam?  You don’t hear stories of them after they came home.  Most don’t even think about it again unless it’s brought up in conversation.  Today, .45% of American men and women have shouldered wars on two fronts, offered emergency aid to numerous nations in need such as Japan and Haiti, policed the borders for drug runners, and even fought off pirates.... simultaneously!  For the first time in history so few are doing so much.  What happens to them now?  We got Sadam and Bin Laden.  The president has ordered the troops home.  Where will these veterans go?

They are the men and women sitting on the train, or getting movie tickets in front of you.  You don’t know it because as Americans, we tend to forget about those people.  They did their job, we won, now let’s talk about other people.  The WWII vets are dying off now and suffered for years with what many of the Vietnam vets have decided being homeless is better than.  Inadequate care is what they all got.  To make matters worse, they didn’t get enough of that care, and they had to battle to get what they did get.  I watched a WWII pilot on his electric scooter run out of air before he could be seen and fitted for new glasses.  I am proud to be part of that .45% and would do it again in a heartbeat.  But I am appalled with the way America takes care of her protectors.  How can a nation as ready to send their forces into harm’s way, be so quick to neglect those same men and women.  As if things aren’t bad enough, doctors are misdiagnosing patients just so save bureaucratic dollars.  Washington talks on a regular basis about cutting funds to care for those very same people.

Right now there is an epidemic of veterans coming home with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.  There are private practices trying innovative new ways to actually treat the problem and having success.  What does this country do?  They feed drugs in large quantity to affected vets not to treat the sickness, but to put them in a walking coma until they quit complaining.  “Oh you can’t sleep?  Here are some narcotics to knock you out.”  “Can’t leave your house because you are so afraid of what might happen?  Good, then you can’t come here and ask for more help.”

“That just sounds insane.”
“It can’t be the truth.”
“No way would the greatest nation in the world mistreat people so badly.”
“Surely it only seems that way.”

Like I said before I served as part of that less than half of one percent.  I also came home sick like so many of my brothers and sisters.  Like them I was a hero that everyone cheered on.  Like them I did what was asked to preserve our way of life.  And like them, I now barely exist.  We are drugged up to the point we don’t know what’s going.  If the meds don’t numb us, the sickness pushes it away from us.  So many have already chosen death over an existence where things like Thanksgiving dinner are nothing but a nightmare of what used be.  We can tell you the movements of every threat around us, but can’t remember what day our kids were born.  We sit in our houses, unable to hold a job, constantly checking the locks and keeping everyone and everything at a safe distance.  For far too many, the war rages on inside of us.  You can’t see these war wounds.  You can’t watch these disabled on the Special Olympics.  They are the silent wounded.

What is this great nation doing about these people?  The same as every other vet of course.  They are sweeping them to the side.  They are getting the same inadequate help, but can’t even sit there long enough for their air tanks to run out.  They can’t even walk into the building.  If they do manage to pull together the courage to get in and demand the help they deserve, then “take a number” like everyone else.  When their number gets called they are railroaded by doctor after doctor who sole purpose in life is to discount the severity of their sickness.  Time after time, they are made to relive the events that made them so sick.  They are pushed beyond their limits so that those doctors get paid.  The same money going to pay all of these doctors could pay for much better treatment, but in the grand scheme the government saves money having these cynical quacks.  Even if you have been diagnosed by a VA doctor as having PTSD and are being treated, you still get to go be judged by someone whose very job is to say “You are making it up” or “Oh you’re not as bad as you think.”

What is going to happen when American boys and girls stop joining?  When they see what the future holds for them and they “say no way”, then who will fight?  “A veteran is someone who, at one point in his life wrote a blank check made payable to ‘The United States of America’ for an amount of ‘up to and including my life.’”  Maybe it’s time for The United States of America to write a check payable to its veterans for an amount of whatever it takes to thank you for our freedom.