– I wrote what was, for me, a sad and poignant piece ➡ a few days ago about Viet-Nam, Iraq and the very transient reasons why so many of our young have lost their lives in these conflicts. If you need yet another reason to doubt how much those who run the government really value the lives the naive and patriotic risk for them, this article might be a wake-up call.
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Behind the door of Army Spec. Jeremy Duncan’s room, part of the wall is torn and hangs in the air, weighted down with black mold. When the wounded combat engineer stands in his shower and looks up, he can see the bathtub on the floor above through a rotted hole. The entire building, constructed between the world wars, often smells like greasy carry-out. Signs of neglect are everywhere: mouse droppings, belly-up cockroaches, stained carpets, cheap mattresses.
This is the world of Building 18, not the kind of place where Duncan expected to recover when he was evacuated to Walter Reed Army Medical Center from Iraq last February with a broken neck and a shredded left ear, nearly dead from blood loss. But the old lodge, just outside the gates of the hospital and five miles up the road from the White House, has housed hundreds of maimed soldiers recuperating from injuries suffered in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
More… ➡
– I’d like to say a bit more on this subject. Some you, my readers, may assume from what I’ve written that I am totally anti-war but this is not so. When the US was attacked by the Japanese and when Hitler was bent on conquoring the world, those were situations in which I would have had no hesitation in defending my country. It is these other so-called ‘wars’, these affairs of geo-political positioning, these messes that we get into incrementally that end up so tangled that no one can quite remember how we got into them that I oppose. I refuse, point blank, to give anyone else a say in how my life is ‘spent’. If you have a war, I will decide for myself if I think it is worth risking my life for.
Hi Dennis,
How much evidence is necessary before more people discern that the “support the troops” mantra is a purposeful deception? These young people are cannon fodder for corporate profits and geopolitical gain. They have been deceived into fighting a war and others have been deceived into thinking that leaders of the political right are actually sincere in their assertions about war and the troops. People who tout so-called Christian values while beating the drums of war either can’t discern good from evil or are actively being deceptive.
War is evil, pure and simple. The only humane way to “support the troops” is by ending all wars and establishing true and just solutions to human needs.
Here is Wisdom !!
People should not confuse the Walter Reed Hospital with the VA System. Walter Reed is an Army Facility, slated for Base Closure.
I would like to provide a description of something our government is doing right these days with regard to Vets.
I am currently a resident in a Veteran’s Home after having undergone treatment through the VA for PTSD and Depression, long overdue some 40 years after the Tet Offensive that cap stoned my military 2nd tour in Vietnam with a lifetime of illness.
My blog has attracted the stories of many veterans such as myself and other sufferers from PTSD who were victimized by elements of society other than the VA system of medical and mental treatment. I, for one, became trapped in the Military Industrial Complex for 36 years working on weapons systems that are saving lives today but with such high security clearances that I dared not get treated for fear of losing my career:
http://rosecoveredglasses.blogspot.com/2006/11/odyssey-of-armaments.html
When my disorders became life threatening I was entered into the VA System for treatment in Minneapolis. It saved my life and I am now in complete recovery and functioning as a volunteer for SCORE, as well as authoring books and blogging the world.
When I was in the VA system I was amazed at how well it functioned and how state of the art it is for its massive mission. Below is a feature article from Time Magazine which does a good job of explaining why it is a class act:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1376238,00.html
I had state of the art medical and mental care, met some of the most dedicated professionals I have ever seen and was cared for by a handful of very special nurses among the 60,000 + nursing population that make up that mammoth system. While I was resident at the VA Hospital in Minneapolis I observed many returnees from Iraq getting excellent care.
I do not say the VA system is perfect but it is certainly being run better on a $39B budget than the Pentagon is running on $494B.