By Dan Carpenter
TheStatehouseFile.com
For all the stirring platitudes about never forgetting their sacrifices, the U.S. government historically has found it far easier to send men and women off to war than to care for them when they come marching and limping home.
Dan Carpenter is a columnist for TheStatehouseFile.com and the author of “Indiana Out Loud.”
Dan Carpenter is a columnist for TheStatehouseFile.com and the author of “Indiana Out Loud.â€
Compounding the insult upon injury is the tendency of politicians to use troops and veterans as fodder in their own domestic wars for self-aggrandizement.
Aggravating that crime is the bald hypocrisy of accusing the other side of indifference toward veterans while refusing to put money where the mouthing, and the need, are.
Commentary button in JPG – no shadowMaking war is capitalism, Marx will tell you. Making whole those who have to fight them is socialism, where nobody profits but the ordinary Joes and Janes who did the fighting.
It’s been ever thus, even if Fox News would have you believe the current medical scandal at the Department of Veterans Affairs is another Barack Obama invention.
It started before they drove the Bonus Army out of Washington in 1932, violently ending a protest over deferred pay from World War I.
It started before Coxey’s Army marched on D.C. in 1894, demanding bonuses.
It started about when the nation did, in 1783, when Revolutionary War veterans descended on the then-capital of Philadelphia and demanded Congress reverse the denial of separation pay.
I don‘t go back quite that far, but I did a lot of news reporting on the widespread complaints of inadequate medical care and other benefits by Vietnam Era vets; and continuing disgruntlement by veterans and their organizations – both militant and “establishment†– on through to the present.
One day during the 1980s, I was being led with other journalists on a tour of the Roudebush West 10th Street VA Medical Center by a supervising psychiatric nurse. It was a congenial exercise in PR for the most part. Then someone asked why there was a waiting list for some important services.
“That’s what you get,†the man said before briskly moving us on, “when you elect Ronald Reagan president.â€
Reagan, the champion of military spending, made veterans’ benefits part of his equally famous social services cuts. But it’s been the wars of the Bushes that have really swamped the VA. And the proudly patriotic conservatives don’t seem to mind as long as the party label’s right. They reelected President George W. Bush and then-Rep. Steve Buyer, R-Ind., back at mid-decade without demanding that they rethink budget cuts for veterans’ services. Buyer, as chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee, acquiesced to VA underfunding that his predecessor, Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., had consistently fought. Having former VA chief and U.S. senator Max Cleland, a triple amputee from the Vietnam War, campaign for Buyer’s opponent in 2006 didn’t help enough, if any. But then, Cleland had lost his Senate seat in 2002 to a rightwing assault that likened him to Osama bin Laden. What have you done for us lately, Max?
Underfunding of veterans’ needs continues. As does politics. Republicans who successfully filibustered last winter against socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders’ bill to relieve the VA of the pressures of scarce resources are now demanding the head of the VA director and using this current issue, grave as it admittedly is, as a club against Obama, public health care in general and Democrats in November. (Meanwhile, their comrades in the House, who cut embassy security funding, are re-investigating Benghazi.)
Veterans’ organizations, to their credit, are firing back, Indy’s own American Legion being an unfortunate exception thus far. A bitter war of words is under way. Without doubt, the next shooting war is on its way as well. More veterans to love.
Dan Carpenter is a freelance writer, contributor to The Indianapolis Business Journal and the author of “Indiana Out Loud.â€
