Veterans Day

Four years I wrote a post which began:

It's called "Veterans Day" here in the States - we renamed it, I guess, when it became clear that the War to End War hadn't and wouldn't. So it's Veterans Day, now - not Memorial Day, for the dead, that's in May,... now we remember the living.

At least, we say we do. Well, I'm a veteran. I don't want just another day off work with no commitment behind it to actually give a damn about the veterans, especially those who come home from these modern wars all torn up, because medicine can save their bodies, only to find that no one in the government intends to take care of them. Veterans Day is nothing more than automobile sales, and servicemen get a 5% discount!, and wear your uniform, get in free! It's not go to a hospital and see what the price really is; it's not lobby the congress to restore the benefits cut in 1995; it's not give them their meds and counseling on time and affordably; it's not tell the VA to actively take care of vets instead of waiting for them to find out on their own what they're eligible for. And it's most certainly not the government actually giving a damn....

Since then, of course we had ever accumulating proof of that, in the Walter Reed scandal (you do remember that?); we've had "Warriors in Transition" (the catchy new name for wounded soldiers on their way to discharge via the VA and therapy); acres of missing paperwork - much of it shredded "in error"; "personality disorders" being diagnosed by the dozens so soldiers can be kicked out of the army without benefits; six months and more for initial claims to be processed; National Guardsmen brought back from Iraq after 729 days of active duty - so they don't qualify for the educational benefits that kick in at 730; numerous VA holdover appointees left in place and working against Shinseki; and more jobs still unfilled and a Defense hiring freeze in place - not to mention that Obama continues to prosecute the war in Afghanistan. This past year the suicide rate in the military exceeded that of civilians for the first time. (Read this interview with Steve Robinson, advocate and expert in military mental health for a sobering look at how the military treats this problem for active-duty vets). And though the military dropped those "personality disorder discharges" - which debar the vet suffering from PTSD or other mental injuries from benefits and care - they decreased from 1,072 in 2006 to just 64 through 2010 - discharges for other physical or mental conditions ("adjustment disorder") have increased from 1,453 in 2006 to 3,844 in 2009 - same game, different name (source) ... Need I go on? I could.

Today is Veterans Day. It's not Memorial Day. It's not a day to refuse to fight wars - some wars are necessary.

But it is a day to honestly assess the price of the war - any war - to those who fight it and come home, and to promise ourselves to do the right thing by them. Because it is the right thing. Because we owe it to them. Because we sent them into harm's way, and they were harmed, and our contract with them is to take care of them. As I said before,

We don't need people paying lip service to vets while ignoring them in the VA hospitals or on the street corners. We don't need to mythologize veterans, turn them into some great symbol of our nation's righteous aggression while we forget their humanity. We don't need a holiday that glorifies war by glorifying soldiers.

Let's contemplate the cost of the non-stop, endless wars this country feels somehow called upon to fight. And let's stop all our ultimately empty fetishization of the military, like calling them "Wounded Warriors" in ordinary prose. Let's stop capitalizing Solider and Wounded Warrior and Troop - and stop capitalizing on them, too. Let's stop the relentless glorification of the figure of the soldier, and start actually caring about them. Let's stop Supporting the Troops with magnets and signs, and start some actual damned support - with money, first of all, money and beds and hospitals and benefits that actually are.

In the last couple of years we've made a start. The VA's funding was made more timely, so the rationing of care that comes from uncertainty has ended. And we've streamlined the requirements and application processes for the stunning over 30% of veterans that apply for psych help. Congress approved funding for an aggressive program for veterans at risk of suicide. But we need to do more. Funding in advance is great, but it must be adequate funding. The days of a hospital having one psychiatrist taking appointments two days a week, for instance, must end. And expansion to meet the growing need - fueled by this apparently endless "war on terror" and the better medical care that brings more vets home to live instead of be buried - is expensive and slow.

The new Congress soared in with promises to cut spending. Privatizing the VA, at least the hospitals, is high on some agendas. It's a bad idea, and we mustn't let it happen. The VA may be that scary thing - government-funded health care - but it is genuinely good, efficient, affordable, available health care, and let's never forget that it's health care for people whose lives the government put at risk. Supporting the Troops is more than magnets and slogans.; it's supporting and fully funding the VA.

So let's save the worship for Memorial Day. Today's for the ones who are still alive, and most of all for the ones who still need us.

Last year my poem was Li Po's Nefarious War, translated from the Chinese by Shigeyoshi Obata (read it here). The year before it was The Next War by Robert Graves (read it here), three years ago it was Aftermath by Siegfried Sassoon (read it here), and the first year it was 1916 seen from 1921 by Edmund Blunden (read it here). This year I offer you a pair of short poems by Carl Sandburg, written during WWI: Iron and Grass. Last year's poem spoke of The long, long war [that] goes on ten thousand miles from home. This year's speaks of those who die so far away from home. We owe it to them to make sure what they die for is worth it, and them...

Iron

Guns,
Long, steel guns,
Pointed from the war ships
In the name of the war god.
Straight, shining, polished guns,
Clambered over with jackies in white blouses,
Glory of tan faces, tousled hair, white teeth,
Laughing lithe jackies in white blouses,
Sitting on the guns singing war songs, war chanties.

Shovels,
Broad, iron shovels,
Scooping out oblong vaults,
Loosening turf and leveling sod.

I ask you
To witness-
The shovel is brother to the gun.

Grass

Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.
Shovel them under and let me work—
I am the grass; I cover all.

And pile them high at Gettysburg
And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.
Shovel them under and let me work.
Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:
What place is this?
Where are we now?

I am the grass.
Let me work.