Irregular Times Diaries: Unfit Discussion
In a time of the spring, old paths are obscured and new growth begins.
Irregular Times Diaries: Unfit DiscussionIn a time of the spring, old paths are obscured and new growth begins.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17218342/Â At Mologne House, a struggle to recover. War survivors wrestle with military bureaucracy, personal demons
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17160574/Â Forced to battle the system at Walter Reed
For those of you that read these stories and think, damn republicans, I want you to stop and think for a minute….for this to have gotten this bad, this system was falling in disrepair long before this. It does not excuse the fact, just like our own health care system and education system, we the American people allowed our government to do this to our veterans, our sick, and our children. The last of the patriots, that last of the free thinkers was WWII when according to one author (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16906168/) 10% of the population served in the armed forces. But these people also fought for their rights, stood up for themselves and took it upon themselves to keep our government honest.
Now, according to this author, you’d have to knock on 200 doors before you’d find a family affected by the Iraq War. 200 doors….that is 1/2 of 1% of our nations population. The same probably goes for health care and education. If it doesn’t effect me, it doesn’t matter - our congress and senate and president and all his council are those people. They are one of those 199 doors.
Please call your congress person and tell them you do not want Vietnam revisited……fund our VA’s, fix the system, digitize our soldiers records, take responsibility for the people you broke.   Â
Senate Armed Forces Committee http://www.congress.org/congressorg/directory/committees.tt?commid=sarme
House Armed Forces Committee http://www.congress.org/congressorg/directory/committees.tt?commid=hsecu
Thank you
Military Spouse
2nd Deployment Eminent
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February 19th, 2007 at 11:50 am
“Take responsibility for the people you broke” — those few words encapsulate the government’s responsibility really well.
February 19th, 2007 at 1:49 pm
I agree that it’s too easy to just blame “the Republicans.” I a burst of blind, poll-driven “bipartisanship,” the Democratic congress signed on to this war without doing their homework. Now the hospitals are overflowing, sending wounded veterans to live in rat-infested motels. Some definition of “support the troops.”
But now that the war is so unpopular, why, the Democrats are going for a non-binding resolution against escalation. Easy, now, guys. Don’t stick your necks out!
February 19th, 2007 at 2:45 pm
There are similar problems with the Peace Corps. Some have been battling the bureaucracy for years, I believe any benefits have to come through the Department of Labor. There is no centralized office to give info, the PC certainly doesn’t give it, and returned volunteers have gone to their congressional reps for assistance. In some cases they have been able to get GAO reports, but what is needed is for Congress to establish an ombudsman’s office to do some advocacy for those who served and were hurt as a result.
But I hear if you are an ordinary drug addict it can be very easy to get on disability.
February 19th, 2007 at 11:24 pm
For those of you that need more info, or think this is a recent break down think again, the VA has been under funded forever, but the funding is being pulled by Bush and his cronies from vets and their families to make more vets (Iraq troop surge) The first link was printed in Jan 2006 and has since snowballed to what you see on tv is the work of a spineless democracy. The second printed in a Baltimore paper gives staggering statistics and gives reason but not forgiveness to the Marine suicide here in MN.
http://www.armytimes.com/news/2007/01/tnsWounded070119/
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/020507M.shtml
Again, please, call your congress person and tell them to give emergency funds to the VA and then funding with stipulations that it will be used for records, buildings, and staffing. And also the retraining of our Army leaders to except the fact that mental illness is a fact of war!
Laurie O
That which you will not resist and mobilize to stop, you will learn - or be forced - to accept
February 24th, 2007 at 10:59 am
Our gov’t reps aren’t the only ones too cowardly to stick their necks out; its the majority of the people that make up every community in this country. That 1 in 200 statistic was not limited to just those immediately affected (spouse, child, parent). They had to expand their definition to include anyone remotely affected by someone deployed or in the services (4th cousin twice removed, the sister of my brother-in-law’s second wife, etc), otherwise the numbers would have been worse. All our communities are filled with callous cowards who give little more than trite, after-thought lipservice and a yellow ribbon magnet on the butt-end of their vehicles. Armchair war jockies make all sorts of comments and become flippantly gung-ho about sending other people’s loved ones off to fight for lies and greed. As long as they aren’t personally affected; as long as they or their children don’t have to pick up a gun and go stand in the sand. The people in this country do a fantastic job of blinding themselves to those inconvenient responsibilities like taking care of the families while soldiers are deployed or taking care of those soldiers when they return. We - the American people - wanted this war (what was the approval statistic at the start of the Iraq fiasco? 70%, 80% of the population wanted to invade?); that decision has consequences and those consequences are our responsibility as citizens of this country to bear and take care of. This country made a decision; it doesn’t matter if you agreed with it or not. In making that decision, we accepted the burdens associated with it. I never wanted the Iraq war; my husband has already been over and will be sent again; I bear the real weight of this war even though I disagree with it. How many of you will actually contact your gov’t representatives? How many of you will reach out to that one mother or spouse in your neighborhood (or the neighborhood 5 miles away) and offer to mow the yard or help patch the roof while their soldier is away? When was the last time you actually did something tangible for a family, instead of uttering lipservice? The general person in this country is viewing our wars as novel, disconnected entertainment displayed on the evening “news”. Every person in this country is responsible for the reality of Walter Reed; every person in this country is responsible for the isolation, disconnection and unshared burden military families experience from their communities. The comfort people enjoy because it feels easier to do nothing than get involved enables scenarios like Walter Reed to occur, and to keep occurring. Every person is responsible for correcting these wrongs. Do something constructive - contact your representatives and get involved.
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