Mike came back from
Vietnam physically whole. He lost his leg in a car accident caused by a drunk
driver. The mental scars, he said, were impossible to heal. He understood that
his country drafted him to fight the spread of communism but he also knew that
the industrial military complex had to stay in business profitably.
He described the stifling
air in the jungle, so humid that it was hard to breathe and uniforms never dried,
crawling on red dirt covered with ants and snakes, digging underground for
cover, bitten by snakes and creepy insects the size of a man’s palm, being shot
at and not knowing where the enemy was hiding, the Vietnamese watching them and
tracking them by their shaving cream.
Seeing your best friends
blown to bits or die in your arms from stray bullets was something Mike could
never erase from his mind. When he came home, he was spat at by liberals who
were unhappy with the war. They took their hatred and disdain out on the
returning countrymen who were drafted to fight a war liberals vehemently
opposed from the luxury of their cozy homes and freedoms protected by the very
soldiers they were maligning and abusing. Mike was bitter that the faceless
bureaucrats who sent them to war were never harmed or blamed. He resented
Hollywood and Hanoi Jane (Fonda) for comforting the enemy.
Mike took my classes not
because he was hoping to get a better job. Who was going to hire this broken
man, he said? He had a thirst for knowledge, he wanted to learn, to continue
his schooling that was abruptly interrupted by the draft. He did not have the
luxury of refusing the draft or hiding behind a powerful daddy or go to medical
school in order to skip the draft.
Being a veteran, Mike had
to drive four hours many times each month to seek medical help in the nearest
VA hospital. I thought it odd at the time that this man, who served his country
in Vietnam and was promised stellar medical care for the rest of his life,
could not be seen at the nearest local hospital, ultra-modern, and equipped to
handle any health needs Mike might have had. His VA hospital appointments dragged
on for months and years before he got his first prosthesis for his missing leg.
Judging by the recent VA
scandal, things are a lot worse than Mike had described years ago. Citizens
should be outraged that so many veterans died while on the waiting list to be
treated at VA hospitals.
Americans should ask the
question why are our veterans receiving third world medical care when they have
earned and were promised the best of care for the rest of their lives while we
give free stellar health care to illegal aliens in California and elsewhere,
medical care they are not entitled to and have not earned?
Rationing health care to
our heroes is the wrong way to trim the budget and the out of control spending.
What happened to the Hippocratic Oath that doctors take when graduating from
medical school? Are performance bonuses for rationing care to our needy
veterans more important than the oath to do no harm?
A Washington Post-Kaiser
Family Foundation poll reported that only 8 percent of veterans believe Veteran
Affairs is doing an excellent job. Six in ten troops who served in Iraq and
Afghanistan believe VA is doing a “less-than-good job of meeting the needs of
veterans.”
(Gregg Jaffe, The
Washington Post, May 21, 2014)
According to Stars and
Stripes, “nearly half of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans are filling” disability
claims, “a flood of claims that has overwhelmed the VA and generated a backlog
of 300,000 cases stuck in processing for more than 125 days. Some have
languished for more than a year.” Last year there were 611,000 claims.
“We’re not where we need
to be, but we’re making progress,” said our President. It is an understatement
to call this debacle a “national embarrassment” and “a mess” when so many lives
were lost, the appointment books cooked, and the backlog is huge.
The scars, the constant
pain, the missing limbs, the headaches, depression, the numerous surgeries to
fix indescribable physical and mental damage to the bodies of those who
survived, the frustration, the changed lives, brought out the question posed by
doctors in Afghanistan who “had debated whether they should even be saving
these troops” who previously, without the advances in combat medicine, would
have bled out on the battle field only a few years earlier” – “What kind of
lives could they lead?”
Army Staff Sgt. Sam
Shockley, who suffered multiple debilitating wounds and 40 surgeries so far after
stepping on a buried bomb that blew his legs off, had a simple answer, “I
always think that it could be worse.” “I would say I came out of this with my
head on my shoulders.” http://www.stripes.com/1.284278
What is the price of war? As
Stars and Stripes wrote, “VA calculates war’s true cost, one disabled veteran
at a time.” It is hard to account for the actual cost of the war machine and
the cost in human lives lost and families destroyed. Pricing a human life, the loss
of body parts, of mental acuity, and of lifelong pain and suffering are highly
arbitrary. For a surviving veteran, a
lost foot or hand cost $101.50, two missing legs cost $1,000-$1,300, and missing
arms cost $1,600-$1,800 a month in disability payments. Those vets who need
help around the clock are paid $8,179 a month. Vets would give anything to get
their corporal and mental integrity back.
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