This Memorial Day, Remember 9/11 - The Reason for the Wars
Memorial Day: Among post-9/11 veterans, deepening antiwar sentiment
This Memorial Day the Iraq war is over and the Afghanistan war is winding down, but they're weighing heavily on post-9/11 veterans, 33 percent of whom said they weren't worth the cost.
By Gloria Goodale, Staff writer / May 26, 2012
U.S. war veterans raise their hands in solidarity after throwing their medals towards the site of the NATO Summit in Chicago May 20, 2012. Nearly 50 veterans threw service medals into the street near the summit site in protest.
Los Angeles
Despite the end of the Iraq war and the scheduled drawdown in Afghanistan, this Memorial Day arrives against a backdrop of deepening – and some say more troublesome – antiwar sentiment among military veterans.
One of the most vivid and replayed images of protesters at the NATO summit last weekend in Chicago was a group of some 40 vets lined up to toss their war medals over the chain link fence to protest what former naval officer Leah Bolger calls “the illegal wars of both NATO and America.”
According to a recent Pew Research Center study, 33 percent of post-9/11 veterans say that neither the war in Iraq nor in Afghanistan “were worth the cost,” and this among a highly motivated cohort who chose to serve.
What this means, says retired US Army Col. Ann Wright, who resigned from a State Department post in 2006 over US policies in Iraq, is that there is a widening gap between the government, military policies, and the soldiers that carry them out.
“Military personnel know America will always have a military, but there is growing concern over the way it is being used,” says the 29-year veteran, adding that an increasing list of concerns include “the use of torture, illegal detentions, and both soldiers and the public being lied to about the actual reasons for going into combat.”
But in contrast to the extremely vocal and visible antiwar movements of the Vietnam War era, many veterans in the all-volunteer military have found it harder to mobilize effective actions, says Cameron White, a former Marine who served two tours in Iraq before joining “Iraq Veterans Against the War.”
The 32-year-old Pasadena City college student, who enlisted in 2000, says “it’s harder to speak to fellow soldiers about their decision to join, as the onus is on us because we chose this.”
Many of the post-9/11 veterans who have served in what is now American’s longest-running military action, find that pressures that can fuel antiwar sentiment have ratcheted up with the all-volunteer army.
According to the Pew study, only some one half of one percent of Americans have served in the military in the past decade, the lowest rate in history. Even as an unprecedented number of Americans – some 80 percent – are therefore sheltered from the war’s hardships because none of their relatives are serving, the pressures of military service have increased.
In order to meet troop level requirements, many soldiers have been deployed as many as six times – a level unheard of prior to the all-volunteer military, points out Mike Hanie, an Air Force veteran and founder and executive director of the Institute for Veterans and Military Families at Syracuse University.
This growing antiwar sentiment within the veteran community, he says, is easily traced to the fact that “the men and women who have served are returning home to communities where they feel that their service doesn’t matter.”
The veterans’ “families, friends, neighbors, and colleagues do not understand, or seem to care about our all-volunteer military and the sacrifices they have made defending our freedom,” he adds.
Veterans returning to normal life are facing struggles that include uncertainty about possible redeployments, cutbacks in benefits, and an economy in recession. This has led to many troublesome results, including a suicide rate among post 9/11 veterans of some 18 veterans per day, says Dr. Harry Croft, a former Army doctor and a psychiatrist who has evaluated more than 7,000 veterans for combat-related post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and is author of the book “I Always Sit With My Back to The Wall.”
“It’s not clear anymore what the end result is of these wars,” he says, adding that in Iraq, for example, US troops are gone, but many vets wonder what happens now.
“We got rid of Saddam Hussein and put a democratic government in place, but the enemy still hasn’t gone away,” he notes. In addition, he says, many vets feel that we were told before the war in Iraq that oil money was going to pay for the war, “which of course didn’t happen.”
Afghanistan is even murkier, says Dr. Croft. “Our troops are over there risking their lives and the Afghan people and government don’t even like us,” he says, adding “our troops are facing suicide bombers and IEDs knowing that today might be their last day, but for what?”
You should see the other guy...
Post-9/11 veterans file historically high amount of health claims
http://www.dailyherald.com/article/20120528/news/705289868/print/
Larry Bailey II tripped a rooftop bomb in Afghanistan last June. He remembers flying into the air, then fellow troops attending to him.
“I pretty much knew that my legs were gone. My left hand, from what I remember I still had three fingers on it,” although they didn't seem right, the 26-year-old Marine from Zion said.
Bailey ended up a triple amputee and expects to get a hand transplant this summer.
America's newest veterans are filing for disability benefits at a historic rate, claiming to be the most medically and mentally troubled generation of former troops the nation has ever seen.
A staggering 45 percent of the 1.6 million veterans — Bailey, transitioning from active duty, is not yet a veteran — from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are now seeking compensation for injuries they say are service-related.
That is more than double the estimate of 21 percent who filed such claims after some other relatively recent wars, top government officials told The Associated Press.
What's more, these new veterans are claiming eight to nine ailments on average, and the most recent ones over the last year are claiming 11 to 14. By comparison, Vietnam veterans claimed less than four, and those from World War II and Korea claimed just two. Problems can be anything from a bad back to hearing loss to post-traumatic stress disorder.
It's unclear how much worse off these new veterans are than their predecessors. Government officials and some veterans' advocates believe the weak economy is prompting some claims. They say veterans who might have been able to work with certain disabilities may be more inclined to seek benefits now because they lost jobs or can't find any.
Aggressive outreach and advocacy efforts also have brought more veterans into the system, which must evaluate each claim to see if it is war-related. Payments range from $127 a month for a 10 percent disability to $2,769 for a full one.
Yet as the nation commemorates the more than 6,400 troops who died in post-9/11 wars, the problems of those who survived also draw attention. These new veterans are seeking a level of help the government did not anticipate, and there is no special fund set aside to pay.
The Department of Veterans Affairs is mired in backlogged claims, but “our mission is to take care of whatever the population is,” said Allison Hickey, the VA's undersecretary for benefits. “We want them to have what their entitlement is.”
The 21 percent who filed claims in previous wars is Hickey's estimate of an average, dating back through World War II. The VA has details only on the current disability claims being paid to veterans of each war.
The AP spent three months reviewing records and talking with doctors, government officials and former troops to take stock of the new veterans. They are different in many ways from those who fought before them.
More are from the Reserves and National Guard — 43 percent of those filing disability claims — rather than career military.
More of them are women, accounting for 12 percent of those who have sought care through the VA. And some are claiming PTSD because of military sexual trauma.
The new veterans have different types of injuries than previous veterans did. That's partly because improvised bombs have been the main weapon used against them and because body armor and improved battlefield care allowed many of them to survive wounds that in past wars proved fatal.
“They're being kept alive at unprecedented rates,” said Dr. David Cifu, the VA's medical rehabilitation chief. More than 95 percent of troops wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan have survived.
A little more than half of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans eligible for VA care have used it so far.
Of those who have sought VA care:
Ÿ More than 1,600 of them lost a limb; many others lost fingers or toes.
Ÿ At least 156 are blind, and thousands of others have impaired vision.
Ÿ More than 177,000 have hearing loss, and more than 350,000 report tinnitus — noise or ringing in the ears.
Ÿ Thousands are disfigured, as many as 200 of them so badly that they may need face transplants. One-quarter of battlefield injuries requiring evacuation included wounds to the face or jaw, one study found.
“The numbers are pretty staggering,” said Dr. Bohdan Pomahac, a surgeon at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston who has done four face transplants on nonmilitary patients and expects to start doing them soon on veterans.
Others have invisible wounds. More than 400,000 of these new veterans have been treated by the VA for a mental health problem, usually PTSD.
Tens of thousands of veterans suffered traumatic brain injury — mostly mild concussions from bomb blasts — and doctors don't know what's in store for them long term. Cifu, of the VA, said roughly 20 percent of active duty troops suffered concussions, but only one-third of them have symptoms lasting beyond a few months.
That's still a big number, and “it's very rare that someone has just a single concussion,” said David Hovda, director of the UCLA Brain Injury Research Center. Suffering multiple concussions or one soon after another raises the risk of long-term problems. A brain injury also makes the brain more susceptible to PTSD, he said.
On a more mundane level, many new veterans have back, shoulder and knee problems, aggravated by carrying heavy packs and wearing the body armor that helped keep them alive. One recent study found that 19 percent required orthopedic surgery consultations and 4 percent needed surgery after returning from combat.
All of this adds up to more disability claims, which for years have been coming in faster than the government can handle them. The average wait to get a new one processed grows longer each month and is now about eight months — time that a frustrated, injured veteran might spend with no income.
More than 560,000 veterans from all wars currently have claims that are backlogged — older than 125 days.
The VA's benefits chief, Hickey, gave these reasons:
Ÿ Sheer volume. Disability claims from all veterans soared from 888,000 in 2008 to 1.3 million in 2011. Last year's included more than 230,000 new claims from Vietnam veterans and their survivors because of a change in what conditions can be considered related to Agent Orange exposure. Those complex, 50-year-old cases took more than a third of available staff, she said.
Ÿ High number of ailments per claim. When a veteran claims 11 to 14 problems, each one requires “due diligence,” which consists of a medical evaluation and proof that each is service-related, Hickey said.
Ÿ A new mandate to handle the oldest cases first. Because these tend to be the most complex, they have monopolized staff and pushed up average processing time on new claims, she said.
Ÿ Outmoded systems. The VA is streamlining and going to electronic records, but for now, “We have 4.4 million case files sitting around 56 regional offices that we have to work with; that slows us down significantly,” Hickey said.
Barry Jesinoski, executive director of Disabled American Veterans, called Hickey's efforts “commendable” but said: “The VA has a long way to go” to meet veterans' needs. Even before the surge in Agent Orange cases, VA officials “were already at a place that was unacceptable” on backlogged claims, he said.
He and VA officials agree that the economy is motivating some claims. His group helps veterans file them, and he said that sometimes when veterans come in, “We'll say, 'Is your back worse?' and they'll say, 'No, I just lost my job.'”
Jesinoski does believe these veterans have more mental problems, especially from multiple deployments.
“You just can't keep sending people into war five, six or seven times and expect that they're going to come home just fine,” he said.
For taxpayers, the ordeal is just beginning. With any war, the cost of caring for veterans rises for several decades and peaks 30 to 40 years later, when diseases of aging are more common, said Harvard economist Linda Bilmes. She estimates the health care and disability costs of the recent wars at $600 billion to $900 billion.
“This is a huge number, and there's no money set aside,” she said. “Unless we take steps now into some kind of fund that will grow over time, it's very plausible many people will feel we can't afford these benefits we overpromised.”
How would that play to these veterans, who all volunteered and now expect the government to keep its end of the bargain?
“The deal was, if you get wounded, we're going to supply this level of support,” Bilmes said. Right now, “there's a lot of sympathy and a lot of people want to help. But memories are short and times change.”
Copyright © 2012 Paddock Publications, Inc. All rights reserved.
good memorial day post at Kenny's Sideshow
http://kennysideshow.blogspot.com/2012/05/memorial-day-apostates.html