How we support the troops

In the Sunday Sermonette you said there were times for strong or profane language. This is certainly one of them.

Mental wounds can be as scaring and devastating as physical ones, and can often lead to the harm of others. This isn't new. We've known about the effects of mental injuries since WWI and before. And yet it's still treated as "shell shock." "Chin up, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, that's a good lad. All better now, off you go then."

What Rot! And the DOD and VA won't budget for this - the soldiers and their families can pick up the tab, with their lives.

Not making excuses for any of this, just making an obvious statement.
As with everything in life there will be some who fall through the cracks.

Rightly so the Veterans' blogs and websites should be all over this one.
They themselves could be instrumental in providing support through their own means.

Lea: Mighty big cracks. There is a whole generation of veterans falling through the cracks. As did past generations. There is a social contract between the government and veterans and the government is welshing on their end of it. It is not the responsibility of veterans to take care of their own. They do it for two reasons. Because they care about each other and because the government doesn't.

Lea: Mighty big cracks. There is a whole generation of veterans falling through the cracks. As did past generations. There is a social contract between the government and veterans and the government is welshing on their end of it. It is not the responsibility of veterans to take care of their own. They do it for two reasons. Because they care about each other and because the government doesn't.

Agree with you revere, twice.

There's a veteran right in this house who has had to accept that the government has forgotten about his military service and refuses to fulfill their obligations and promises.

Although it's not the responsibility of veterans to take care of their own it would certainly be a blessing to the Jonathan Schulzes out there.

Why do folks volunteer to be treated this way? And why do they support Bush and co?

Concerned-They do it because they care about their country as you likely do. Marines are also a very hard lot, tough as nails, and they incur 60% casualties generally speaking whenever and where ever they are sent in. They always take it the worst. They also do it also because in a lot of cases its my country right or wrong in reference to Bush and company and they could give one big shit about politics. These are the kinds of people that would answer the call to a dance in the halls of Hell and in this case having seen and returned, he couldnt handle it. No one likely could.There are always stories like this and they have happened for hundreds of years to our veterans. My grandfather was in two world wars, and was in charge of the Selective Service office when he died. My father used to say it was Vietnam, that did it. Sending them out for a war that we could have won in a week if we had pulled the gloves off. He hated the way our soldiers were treated on their return. Spit on, stomped on, thrown away like trash. They have always defended those who couldnt stand, and those that wouldnt stand.

Generally speaking and I mean it generally, there are always groups in this country like Sheehan who run around saying negotiate, talk, throw the flowers down the barrels of the guns. Yep, and that always has gotten us exactly nowhere. We have fought in two great wars, and a bunch of little ones. All for some political aim and gain, and always at the expense of someone else. Those that go to Canada for political reasons should stay there as far as I am concerned. Because right or wrong, this country has endured for the time it has because we were willing to fight. This isnt about Bush and Co Concerned, its about the country and the support they give to it and to a lesser or greater degree depending on their own politics, those temporary occupants of the White House and Congress.

No one volunteers to be treated this way. Each and every one is different, obviously, in how they perceive the world and themselves.
There are good men and women in the service. Some have had a solid upbringing, others not so. Even with that said, you never know how an individual's psyche works, with as much as is known about it. Knowledge only goes so far.
We are flooded with experiences, beliefs, and propaganda at an early age. It's crammed down our throats.
A good starting point is for concerned people to find a way to help those who are suffering, maybe one at a time. And to be big enough to realize that not all can be reached.

Bush has made mistakes, tell me what President hasn't. We live in a zoo, you can either be one of the animals or strive to be a human being.

MRK: Well said, as usual. We must have been typing at the same time. Thanks sir.

Randy: If you can find me documented cases of Vietnam vets who have been spit on you would be doing more than most people who have tried. This is an urban myth. Returning vets are regularly spit on, but not by their fellow citizens. By their government. The old men who sent them to war don't care about them after they have served their purpose. That's also history and it has been going on since Napolean, the first war where conscripts made a difference. This war will present us with an unprecedented number of brain injured youngsters. The goverrnment didn't plan for it and isn't doing much about it now, although we've been aware of it for a couple of years.

I refuse to consign this to the category of "it's always been this way." I don't care what their politics are or whether they are pro war or antiwar. These are not "veterans." They are human beings.

I guess you'll just have to take my word on it when I was 17 and my brother was being brought back into San Fransciso in 1970 Revere. He was in a wheelchair at the time and coming off the plane some hippie sack of shit spit RIGHT in his face and called him a baby killer. I immediately knocked said person on their ass and was happily kicking the snot out of them when the airport police arrived. My bro was shot down four times in helicopters with the last time slamming into the steel bucket seat. Didnt penetrate it but dented it in almost three inches into that little bone on your tail and shattered it and some other near vertebrae things. Starts with a C whatever its named.

As far as caring about them has any government ever returned it in kind? 1776 they were promised freedom as slaves, land if you were white and in some cases whiskey. No one ever got it as far as I know and its taught in military history classes when you enter the military. They know they might not get shit and they still go. As for veterans and human beings I guess you have to be a human to be able to fight, have a willingness to fight to be called a veteran. Always looking for the all things being equal here Revere. I disagree with you. They are neither pro war or anti war even though they'll generally lean towards the former, but they give up being human to become veterans to defend this country for whatever the ELECTED leaders decide needs defending. If that takes an offensive move, then so be it.

By the way, the server is acting funny. It locks the POST button down for minutes at a time.

Great little article on the two sides of the spitting on vets story (true) / myth (false). Admittedly, it leans toward the myth side.

http://www.slate.com/id/1005224/

My favorite part is

"Of course, the myth of the spitting protester predates the Rambo movies, but how many vets--many of whom didn't get the respect they thought they deserved after serving their country--retrofitted this memory after seeing the movie? Soldiers returning from lost wars have long healed their psychic wounds by accusing their governments and their countrymen of betrayal, Lembcke writes. Also, the spitting story resonates with biblical martyrdom. As the soldiers put the crown of thorns on Jesus and led him to his crucifixtion, they beat him with a staff and spat on him."

Spitting is, in essence, a violent crime. Those hippies sure were ones to commit violent crimes and not accept people for being different or damaged...

I'm not saying it did or didn't happen, probably did. But "tempest in a teapot" comes to mind when compared how Jonathan Schulze was treated.

Great piece, revere, but don't you think it would be more fruitful - in terms of getting lawmakers to allocate funds - to speak of PTSD as a brain disorder as opposed to a mental one? As little as scientists may understand about the brain at least it is an organ that can be perceived and hopefully healed, whereas I don't think there is even any generally accepted scientific definition of the mind - and I think that leads to a tendency to view people with "mental" problems as perhaps being no more than pretenders or just weak in character.

My grandfather was in two world wars, and was in charge of the Selective Service office when he died. My father used to say it was Vietnam, that did it. Sending them out for a war that we could have won in a week if we had pulled the gloves off. He hated the way our soldiers were treated on their return. Spit on, stomped on, thrown away like trash.

A pair of marginal comments here:

Best current estimates are that there were approximately one million Vietnamese military fatalities, and four million Vietnamese civilian deaths, during the US involvement in Vietnam. This was on the order of 13% of the population of the country at that time. A comparable 13% casualty rate in the US of the same era would have been 28 million dead.

Given this, I am going to be kept up late tonight wondering just what would have happened had the US in fact "pulled the gloves off". Beyond a certain point, as Churchill said, all that further bombing does is to make the rubble bounce. And by 1975, Vietnam had become far and away the most heavily conventionally bombed nation in the history of military aviation.

More to the point, the idea of "pulling the gloves off" was one that went all the way back to before the main US commitment to VN, back to Dien Bien Phu, when it was suggested that the USAF assist the French garrison by using tactical nuclear weapons against the Viet Minh. That idea came across Eisenhower's desk, and the old soldier, no stranger to tough measures, sent it straight back where it had come from.

The problem with Vietnam was that it was a place where the gloves could *not* be taken off, not without the virtual certainty of involving China in direct armed conflict with the US. A nation which was capable of putting 300 million men under arms, and which by the time the US showed up in Saigon was one that had a nuclear capability of its own, would have had Americans wishing that the damned gloves had stayed on, and that they had stayed home.

A widened war which would have encompassed China was LBJ's nightmare, one openly voiced to his advisors. And Richard Nixon, no wilting dove, found his own measures held in check for the very same reason. That 1970s rapprochement with Beijing was Nixon making a reluctant virtue of necessity.

As for Vietnam veterans being spit on, the experience you relate with regard to your brother is certainly very ugly and unfortunate. I have no doubt that there were other such incidents. I also have no doubt that, as a percentage of the total, they were few. Note that polls of veterans taken in the early '70s reported that the vast majority of them had received a generally cordial reception upon returning to the States.

I have known about two dozen men who served during that time and with whom I have been on good enough terms to ask about their experience. The plural of anecdote is not data, but their collective response about coming home was remarkably similar. They were not jeered or spit upon. Neither were they cheered and saluted. They were for the most part quietly ignored. Which was a hugely disorienting thing for all of them. They had just been out in a bloody, physically grueling life-and-death environment for a year, and no one at home really seemed to care either way.

And the other thing to which they came home was a VA with resources very much inadequate to its new tasks. The saddest thing of all is that no lesson was learned from that episode, either.

JS: Regarding PTSD being mental or physical, you have a point regarding lay perceptions. In the medical field, PTSD is a recognized disorder and whether it is mental or physical is less relevant once you've seen some cases.

Good comment Marquer. Kind of puts this thing Iran in a new light. Would we protect Israel from the Russians or Chinese if they took out the nuke complex at Bushehr pre-emptively? Would we go to the big guns? Dont know.

I can say that the V. vets got the rawest deal because as with Iraq the clear political goals were never established and everyone thought that we would be greeted with open arms. The Kurds were the only ones that did that. Their economy is booming and they are selling food to their old adversaries the Turks. Kind of hard to shoot someone with your mouth full of their food.

Me I would have a police record from the Vietnam era had it not been for a judge in S. Francisco. 17 or not I was looking at the possibility of being thrown into a jail cell for up to a year. Plus such a disturbance I was making using the trash can on the flower child who was trying to get away at the time. I would have used one of those computer monitors on him but I didnt know they were fastened in. My mom and dad were trying to get my brother off to the side and yelling at me to stop and several guys in the crowd were trying to break it up, but there are just days when you gotta do what you have to do. Anyways the flower child got two broken ribs, dislocated jaw and was purple from his face down to his belly button.

I think you are right Marquer, none of the lessons from Vietnam were learned. You cant fight a limited war. We are going to have to hit the Al Mahdi army in under a month and take them out of the equation. I believe you will see us hitting targets inside Iran as part of that and they'll protest. This will continue to drag on for a while. The last few years in the UN have rendered it moot. Koffi Annans constant barrage against the US being war mongers while he is making millions thru his son selling illegal weapons is a travesty. It may have finished that body as a world order group. We of course havent helped things but our allies are selling the terrorists weapons thru the back door (french, germans) for cheap oil.

WMD's existed-VX and Sarin have never been found. Nor were they destroyed. Syria holds the headquarters for the Jihadists and supports them and nothing is done about that.

We arent going to invade Iran but as of this morning Korea has decided to stop enriching uranium. Coincidentally, there have been six diplomatic envoys running back and forth from DC to China. Korea has seen the light. Iran may or may not. But lessons learned from Korea, Vietnam and Iraq are first military and second political. If you fight a war then fight it to win. Fight it quickly and then let the diplomats sort it out.

War? Better get used to the idea of troops in the field and heading to a lot of places in the near future. One poof in this country is going to set things in motion again, and again, and again.

Lea: My husband has been an emergency services psychotherapist for 25 years in the community mental health system and private hospitals.

When his pager goes off--regardless of whether the patient has private insurance, Medicaid, Medicare, no insurance, is a vet, or is an anarchist and regardless of the hour--he immediately contacts the patient, screens him/her for suicidal ideation, and makes an appropriate treatment plan.

That treatment plan might involve meeting the resident on call in the ER, admitting the patient to the inpatient psych unit, doing what's called an "involuntary emergency admission" to the state psychiatric hospital, or finding a bed in a private psychiatric facility.

If he cannot make contact with the patient who has called in reporting he/she is suicidal, he dispatches the police to the address to check on the well-being of the patient.

If he can contact the patient but the patient refuses to be seen face-to-face, he dispatches the police to pick up the patient and bring the patient into the ER for evaluation.

The point is the patient, who is not thinking straight, needs help, and he gets it to him/her.

The VA system has its constraints, but the "crack" that this man fell through is ethically and morally reprehensible and violates the standard of care in the mental health profession.

I would urge any vet who is in a similar situation to contact their community mental health system for services and worry about the benefits paperwork once the patient is stabilized.

..."getting lawmakers to allocate funds - to speak of PTSD as a brain disorder as opposed to a mental one?
As little as scientists may understand about the brain at least it is an organ that can be perceived and hopefully healed,"...

There is a dearth of knowledge, a dearth of effective treatments available, too many barriers to getting what is out there, and an appalling lack of VA beds.

Lea, websites and talking to sufferers isn't effective treatment once it gets that bad, or there'd be many less suicides.

The current state of mental health affairs, and understanding of brain chemistry, is like giving diabetics a standard insulin dose without having understood the importance of inventing blood sugar testing, nor figuring out that diet or excercise has anything to do with diabetes maintenance.
(While too many of the public or the person's relatives are saying, "Just think positive, you'll get back to normal, pull yourself together"... "Oh, diabetes could never happen to me or mine; we're not weak characters.")

Veterans are not being taken care of, (the public's health isn't being taken care of, either) and we owe it to them and their families to have up-to-date research, things like PET brain imaging, and effective treatment and community support, not have any waiting lists for care.

This "falling through the cracks" happens, and traumatized, stigmatized, families sometimes just don't choose media publicity.

The VA once called the family a month after a vet's suicide (a month after the military had been notified of the death for benefits and marker) and said, now they had a bed ready.

Hi - maybe late in the day for this thread but wanted to throw in the following observation as a polysci type; Governments are abstractions it is a logical fallacy to ascribe human characteristics to abstractions. A 'government' does not and can not care about anything, nor can it have wants, desires, wishes, or anything like that. Persons can care about something, a person can want, desire, wish but a government cannot. Ergo there is no government failure to "care" about vetrans or anything else. People commonly anthropomorphize abstractions (e.g., the university "wants" you to graduate) but that merely results in faulty analysis leading to bad policy.

carl: Quite right. The government is not a person. But people are involved and we need to let them know this is not acceptable.

Revere: Urban Myth?? My husband served in the 1st Air Cavalry 1967-68. Upon his return from Vietnam he was indeed, spit upon, both literally and figuratively. He was called one of "Uncle Sam's Trained Baby Killers" and many other things not appropriate to mention here. He got to the point that he never even mentioned his military service on resumes, for fear people would think he was one of those "crazed Vietnam vets" that were so commonly portrayed in movies and TV shows of the day. He has had regular PTSD nightmares for 39 years, but has always been a wonderful, warm and caring husband, father and grandfather.

This may not count as a "documented case" to you, Revere, but it certainly does to our family.

Coming from a family (immediate and extended) who are and have been in all branches of the military, I may have a slightly biased view.
However, a statement of Marquer's: "They were not jeered or spit upon. Neither were they cheered and saluted. They were for the most part quietly ignored. Which was a hugely disorienting thing for all of them. They had just been out in a bloody, physically grueling life-and-death environment for a year, and no one at home really seemed to care either way." makes a good point.
I am going to make sure my family members know that, whether or not I agree with whatever war they may be part of, I am grateful for them, for their trials, sacrifices, and for what they do for our country.

I would like to weigh in on the subject of Vietnam Vets. My Grandfather, Father and Brother along with many many friends were in the Armed Services and served during WW1, WW2, and the Vietnam War. Where I live, people treated the vets with respect, love and compassion. That didn't go far enough to help those seriously having PTSD. I witnessed first hand the destruction to their lives after they returned from Nam. My brother was home only 6 months before he died, couldn't take what he had seen. YES, I am very antiwar, especially one that was WRONG from the beginning. I am ashamed that we take the vets for granted and not care for them properly when they return. Bush & Co. not responsibile???? that lie goes with all the other ones that come out of their mouths.

"They were for the most part quietly ignored."

As someone without any close friends or family in the service, I think this is part of the problem. If you don't have personal connections to the war, the comings and goings of local units is invisible.

Long ago it was determined to hide the returning coffins "for the privacy of the grieving family." We get a day or three, at the most, of some local person who has died in Iraq or Afghanistan. There is a photo on the Obituary page; maybe a small story in the Local Section. Then it's over. A family has to deal with the aftermath, and I suppose it is friends, neighbors and perhaps the family church that is there to help with the grief.

I find it hard to openly discuss in any honest way. There are plenty of us who are against the war, but aware that even voicing that sentiment is felt as a slap to some who serve. I mean no insult; I just think the war is a terrible mistake.

In the past month, one of my son's teammates has had his Dad return safely from Iraq. Another teammate's brother died there in 2003. This is in one little suburb, on one little sports team with twenty or so kids. My husband worked with a man whose son died in Iraq in 2004. I am guessing that by now, everyone has but a small degree of separation from an Iraq war casualty. This will only increase if the war continues.

Maybe that will remove the cloak of invisibility.

Hey listen I dont disagree in a large part with Revere. Most of the things I have seen would have made a maggot puke but thats just me. When did we start losing wars. When we tied in the first one Korea and it became a grind mill for bodies. If you are in it, you win it. Stalemates are just that and pyrrhic victories never work out and THAT is the reason that these guys come back so pissed off and suicidal for the better part. "Did I lose my legs for a reason?" Well, even if you didnt you had better hope that the guys in charge ensure that our side does win else you see the PTSD. Its a lot easier to forget than it is to remember.

Even I have a little PTSD, but its the thousand yard stare and I recognize it when its happening for the better part. Mostly from the mouths that start hanging open and I catch myself. You start talking to one of these guys and they'll quit looking at you and turn their heads right or left, or look down but rarely up while they are relating a story to you about a furball. And its always about a furball that was grisly, shocking or scare you to death stuff. They work well in ordered environments after a incident but unless they were able to shuck the big bad war, many become post war casualties. Nowadays they are training in boot and pre-deployment what it is and how to recognize it. I can remember three instances where we had to get the weapon from someone just to make sure that he didnt whack us. Calling for the dust off was just the beginning for these guys.

I always think that there is an underappreciation for the military by the left. I can guarantee you that they would not be saying the things they do under a Pinochet, Hitler, Stalin etc. We get into fights around this world and they are little. Iraq is a little bigger, but smaller than some. Various reasons of course but mostly to assert the power that we have. If one big country or even a group of little ones such as Korea, Iran etc got together and tangled us up, then a big one weighed in we would be in very deep trouble. So we have about a little one every 5-10 years. Even Clinton used the military for politics so its not just Bush and Co. as everyone puts it. My unit put six months in on the ground in Kosovo. Had to sleep in flak jackets. Goes back to the original question. Did I lose my legs for a reason? THAT is the real question.

Kruger, you should think about the probable outcome before you insist on going in.

I always think that there is an underappreciation for the military by the left.

A significant part of the left that I'm familiar with IS in the military (at least the "left" as it's defined today, being slightly left of what is now the center). I met many of my liberal friends at an officers' wives club luncheon. Both officers and "leftists" that I know were dead set against the Iraq invasion yet are wondering where the support is for returning vets. This is a common thread on liberal websites and blogs.

So I have to disagree with your assumption.

Greg, I said it the week that we were heading into Kuwait to start up the road to Baghdad. I said that the diff was that there was NO political game being extended other than to knock Saddam out. At least in the Gulf War we had daily updates and movies of how we were kicking the hell out of them.

Probably outcomes? There are never any probable outcomes.Just as soon as you think you have it wried down something else happens. Wars are fought by people who are a lot more than the automatons that you think. In Iraq our own commanders much to my dismay stopped the bombing of the Iraqi positions because it was such a rout. But stop they did. Me I would have piled it on for a couple of more days at least. Dont get me wrong, bombing the living shit out of someone doesnt make me happy, contrary to popular belief. I would say less than 3% of the bloggers here have ever seen that up close and personal. Its not Vietnam era type bombing anymore either. They can put a bomb thru the window on a truck nowadays and the collaterals are a lot fewer but still too many. We are working on smart bullets instead of bombs so we get the one shot, one kill that we have always wanted.

My biggest rub is that both parties are using the military for their own political agenda's. Clinton used it for Monicagate, others would assert that Bush was pushed by the G7 and they needed a goat to take the fall afterwards. They got it. Now what? Dont push that probable outcome stuff out as long as you drive a car powered by gasoline, turn on your lights, brush your teeth, or eat food that you didnt grow. Thats a probable outcome, Saddam would have made a grab for the Strait of Hormuz and we would have had a Hell of a time dragging him out of there once in place. That was a very likely outcome.

Peace at all costs gave us WWII, peace after a stalemate gave us Korea, peace likely got a president shot and gave us Vietnam. The bomb gave us an arms race that lasted for nearly 40 years, taking Iraq ensured a madman wouldnt take the Gulf States. Those are undeniable outcomes of failed policie. Stick around Greg, there will be more and from both sides of the fence.