Wanted: A good job and some understanding

Spectacular article. Sums up exactly the way I felt when I left active duty.

Pilgrim's Progress

Amazing piece...

Veterans of recent wars confront grim employment landscape

Sad article. It shows how detached society is from the military. Whereas after World War II veterans returned and their leadership, coolness under pressure, and skills were valued, now even journalists portray the myth that veterans don't know how to do anything except shoot guns. Sad.

They served and came home(less)

This is how we treat our war veterans. So sad.

V.A. Easing Rules for Users of Medical Marijuana

This is not surprising given that both the military and the VA hand out stronger drugs than marijuana on a daily basis. Just drug those veterans up, send them to the VA clinic, and keep them out of sight from the general population of America.

Mental Stress Training Is Planned for Soldiers

I served under COL Williams and he is the perfect person to be charged with implementing this program. COL Williams is one of the few field grade officers that "got it." He cared about the development of his junior officers and genuinely cared about Soldiers' problems and the welfare of their families. He encouraged single junior officers to coach high school football, be involved with the community, and to have fun. He tried to show Soldiers that the Army can be fun when you are in garrison and not being shot at... the Army truly is a family. The former West Point football player moonlighted as a dance instructor and taught Justin Timberlake and hundreds of Army Officers how to dance. In sum, he built a spectacular team and it was an honor to serve under his command. Hopefully, he will be promoted after implementing this program. Soldiers will open up to him because of his personality and he will listen to their suggestions. There is hope for the Army afterall...

In Flanders Fields

This poem was written by a Canadian artillery officer, Lt. Col. John McCrae, during World War I after seeing his friend die in battle. It is the main reason legions of British and many Canadian citizens wear poppies on Remembrance Day (November 11). I was in London for Remembrance Day in 2006 after returning from Iraq and virtually every citizen was wearing a poppy; it was pretty amazing to say the least. Meanwhile, here in America, a sparse few of the citizenry wear poppies on Memorial Day. Oh wait, we have magnetic yellow ribbons to put on our SUVs...

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

War’s Psychic Toll

Brilliant piece by Bob Herbert. I hope everyone has a wonderful Memorial Day weekend.

Because we have chosen not to share the sacrifices of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the terrible burden of these conflicts is being shouldered by an obscenely small portion of the population. Since this warrior class is so small, the same troops have to be sent into the war zones for tour after harrowing tour.

As the tours mount up, so do the mental health problems. Combat is crazy-making to start with. Multiple tours are recipes for complete meltdowns.

Recent attempts by the military to deal with some of the most egregious aspects of its deployment policies have amounted to much too little, much too late. The RAND study found that approximately 300,000 men and women who had served in Iraq and Afghanistan were already suffering from P.T.S.D. or major depression. That’s nearly one in every five returning veterans.

The mass-produced tragedies of war go far beyond combat deaths. Behind the abstract wall of RAND’s statistics is the immense real-life suffering of very real people. The toll includes the victims of violence and drunkenness and broken homes and suicides. Most of the stories never make their way into print. The public that professes such admiration and support for our fighting men and women are not interested.

We’re brutally and cold-bloodedly sacrificing the psychological well-being of these men and women, which should be a scandal. If these wars are so important to our national security, we should all be engaging in some form of serious sacrifice, and many more of us should be serving.

But the country soothes its conscience and tamps down its guilt with the cowardly invocation: “Oh, they’re volunteers. They knew what they were getting into.”

When PTSD Comes Marching Home

Rivers Pitt concludes, that "any nation that cannot properly care for their veterans has no business making new ones. These, our newest generation of scarred soldiers, deserve far better than what they have received from the government and the nation they swore to defend. We sent them over there, and now they are marching home, some of them with Hell itself in their minds and hearts. They can, and must, be helped and healed. We must get them out of Iraq, get them out of Afghanistan, get them home and get them well. They deserve nothing less from us, and it is the very least we can do for them."

See also:
Clinic Shootings Highlight Mental Health Challenges for Military

-"nearly 30,000 [Soldiers] are on their third or fourth tour"

-"more than 27 percent of the NCOs surveyed on their third or fourth deployment reported depression, anxiety or acute stress"

-"overall, the Army's suicide rate reached a record level in 2008, surpassing 20 percent and exceeding that for the U.S. population"

New G.I. Bill Too Popular for the Pentagon's own good?

The military recruits based on the premise that, "If you join, you will get a free college education." Most of America thinks that is the case. Finally, for many, it is the case.

The Primacy of Healing: Politics and Combat Stress in America

In my mind, the pertinent points are somehwat buried in the piece.

The trouble with combat stress (and the traumatic accounts that go with it) is its tendency to call into question the morality of military action. Regardless of the policies, the objectives, or the administrations that enact them, war's essence is challenged outright by the mere existence of combat stress. Upon witnessing the sundered consciousnesses of so many returning veterans and hearing about all the horrible things they endured and committed, one finds it difficult not to conclude that the battlefield must truly be a horrible place. Of course, the justness of war is not defined by its casualties alone, but when the moral compasses of young soldiers are spun to the point where they find it difficult to bear their own skins (as we've seen expressed in the record suicides of late), it leads to a natural suspicion about the moral direction of the war overall. And that is precisely the problem. Like it or not, combat stress is, in its own way, a political statement. It is a silent judgment of war (and of society), and that is why the understanding and treatment of it remain perpetually stifled...
All the while that this effort to segregate the veterans from their wars goes on, the very same veterans will be searching for meaning behind their war experiences, and they will inevitably reach politics because, as Karl Von Clausewitz notoriously points out, "war is the continuation of politics by other means." Whatever conclusions veterans arrive at in the aftermath, one can be sure they will be politically charged. To deny the ruminations of veterans on the grounds of "nonpartisanship" is, for one thing, to ignore the old adage that silence is consent; and for another, it is to prohibit those veterans from processing a major element of their torment. On the other hand, to embrace their political outbursts too fervently or to focus too narrowly on the partisan weight of their every word is to lose sight of the central process underway. That is what is happening now across the country.

John Kerry: Darfur's "A Wild-Ass Place, But There's An Opening.''

Sadly, this man was not elected president in 2004... great article about Sen. Kerry.

Echoes of Vietnam in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Hearing Room

This is a fascinating article. Of most importance though is COL(R)Andrew Bacevich's comments stating that today's youth are disengaged from the war; they just don't care. Why? I postulate that it is because there isn't a draft and they aren't in danger. Why would the youth of this nation care about wars in which only one half of one percent of this nation have fought in Iraq/Afghanistan? They think it isn't their problem... "No draft?! No problem with me!" they think to themselves while texting each other about happy hour.

Kerry was quick to resist analogies between Vietnam and Afghanistan on Thursday, but said some commonalities between the conflicts exist.

“Once again, we are fighting an insurgency in a rural country with a weak central government. Our enemy blends in with the local population and easily crosses a long border to find sanctuary in a neighboring country. We ignore these similarities at our peril,” he said.

The importance of veterans’ perspective is another lesson from the Vietnam War, Kerry said.

Three of the four veterans at the witness table spoke in support of a continuing combat presence in Afghanistan – although they also stressed the need for an expansion of its civilian commitment, in line with the Kerry-Lugar proposal.

However, one corporal from California called U.S. operations in the country an “occupation” and opposed Obama’s decision to boost troop levels by 17,000.

“Sending more troops will not make the U.S. safer, it will only build more opposition against us,” said Rick Reyes, who served with the Marines in both Afghanistan and Iraq.

Reyes’ statements were most similar to Kerry’s when he spoke on behalf of Vietnam Veterans Against the War as a 27-year-old recently returned soldier.

Boston University professor and a retired Army Col. Andrew Bacevich observed that the starkest difference between the hearing Thursday and the one in 1971 is public disengagement.

“When the young John Kerry spoke, many of his contemporaries had angrily turned against their generation’s war. Today, most of the contemporaries of those fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan have simply tuned out the Long War,” Bacevich said. “The predominant mood of the country is not one of anger or anxiety, but of dull acceptance.”

On a happier note, Johns Hopkins University may increase veterans' benefits. You don't even have to have gone to Iraq/Afghanistan to get these benefits, you just need to have served in the military.

The Pentagon's Bionic Arm

This is a good piece on the efforts to create a new prosthetic arm for injured war veterans, but 60 Minutes makes it sound like $100 million is a fortune; it is chump change when it comes to the federal budget. Imagine if this nation really put forth an effort to truly care for injured war veterans. The emphasis on the $100 million pricetag reminded me of a cartoon I saw in the paper a few weeks ago that illustrates how oblivious the American public is towards the war and its returning veterans. Here is the cartoon:
Share

Can Budget Change Improve Care for Veterans?

YES!!!

Share

Obama Pledges New Data System for Veterans

President Obama is on the right track, but he pretty much needs to tell DoD and VA to use one system by [fill in date here], not ask "both departments to work together to define and build a seamless system." This along with advanced funding for VA will go a long way to help fix what is a broken system. Share

Secretary Shinseki

GEN(R) Eric K. Shinseki

I applaud President-elect Obama's choice of General Shinseki to head the Department of Veterans Affairs. The man is a class act. He stood up to the Bush administration's call to fight Iraq on the cheap with too few troops and warned "beware the 12 division strategy for the 10 division Army" in his final speech in uniform due to a forced retirement. In addition, he is a wounded veteran from Vietnam. On a side note, he ran the standard Army fitness test throughout his entire career despite only having half of a foot.

New Veterans Hit Hard by Economic Crisis

According to this article, "A 2007 survey for the Veterans Affairs Department of 1,941 combat veterans who left the military mostly in 2005 showed nearly 18 percent were unemployed as of last year. The average national jobless rate in October was 6.5 percent." This sounds about right, although it is probably higher.

I applied to hundreds of jobs when I left the Army. I had a good undergraduate degree, had begun a master's program, and still could not find a job. I was either "overqualified" or did not have the "experience" needed to do the job. One interviewer told me that all I had done in the Army was "manage a bunch of high school dropouts and some guns" during a lost war. Some employers feared that I had PTSD, because, afterall, all veterans apparently have PTSD.

This is a sad true story. Imagine what an injured veteran, with only a high school education, and a family to support goes through. I had it easy.

"More homeless female Veterans seek shelter." Is this how we support our troops?

There is absolutely no excuse for this. Time and time again, we hear from all Americans of how great our troops are and how much we should support them but where is the outrage over this? Why does something like whether or not two people should be able to marry and "preserve the sanctity of marriage", even though the divorce rate in the U.S. is through the roof, be more important than homeless Veterans who have served this country?

Where is our government? Why should the Dayton Veterans Affair Medical Center be privately funded?

Throughout this entire election cycle, we've listened to numerous polls that Veteran's issues was not the number one priority for voters. Yet these are the same people who put a nice shiny magnet on their car and think that they have done their duty for this country.

It's time for Americans to stop the rhetoric and put their money and time where their mouth is . . .

Veterans' divide on candidates: Distinct views on leadership, judgment shared

An excerpt:

Conventional political wisdom for decades has been that the military leans predominantly Republican, but a former junior Army officer who served in Iraq and supports Obama said that isn't the case anymore.

"I think it breaks about 50/50 (Democratic and Republican) in the enlisted and junior officer ranks," said Terence O'Rourke, a former Army captain who lives in Portsmouth and works as lawyer in the Rockingham County Attorney's Office.

O'Rourke told me he was encouraged to take a serious look at Obama by one of the sergeants in the field artillery platoon he commanded.

"He (Obama) has the rare ability to inspire people and be steady," O'Rourke explained to me. "He'll lead on the economy, and I believe him when he says he'll end the war in Iraq."

When I asked O'Rourke why McCain, a former Navy fighter pilot and Vietnam War hero, does not inspire him, he told me it wasn't a matter of respect, but judgment.

"I admire and respect his service," he said. McCain "never really learned anything about Iraq. He had the wrong judgment; otherwise, he wouldn't have supported it in the first place because the reasons to go were wrong."

O'Rourke emphatically rejects McCain's assertion that anything short of victory in Iraq would be a disaster. "How many times do we have to win in Iraq?" he asked.

After spending a year on patrols, he said, "we succeeded during the original invasion. We succeeded in keeping the country from coming apart. We can't do anything more militarily. The Iraqis are telling us they want us to leave. What we need is political will to find the right solution."

O'Rourke believes Obama is the right person to exert that political will.

See also:
Private Opinions: How Soldiers really vote