One third of all homeless people in this country are military veterans and their families
I caught a segment of the Ed Schultz show today, he had on Paul Rieckhoff, founder and executive director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. He was on to discuss Bill O'Reilly's remarks that "there are no veterans sleeping under bridges".
Well, yes there are, Bill. 200,000 plus of them, to be exact. I didn't get to catch the whole segment (lunchtime listening to the show in the car), but according to Mr. Rieckhoff, 1/3 of all the homeless people in this country are military veterans and their families. I think of my right-wing coworker's assertion that if you're homeless, it's because you're a drunk or drug addict or lazy or mentally ill, and that sort of makes ME ill.
Callers in to the show from Dade and Broward counties in Florida asserted that there are probably many more than 200,000. I guess they're not sleeping under bridges though - just whole familes sleeping in their cars and in shelters.
As an Air Force veteran and former Air Force brat myself, that issue really speaks to me. This administration has treated our veterans MOST shabbily. Cutting off funding for medical treatment for PTSD, reducing combat pay for active duty military, ruining the Iraq and Afghanistan veterans financially and in their personal lives with repeated stop-loss deployments, breaking up families - the list goes on and on. And for Guard and Reserve veterans that keep getting called up and called up and taken away from better paying day jobs, well, that can quickly lead to financial difficulties causing mortgage defaults and loss of your home.
A little bit about PTSD. I don't see how any veteran that has been in a war (as opposed to peacetime military, although their jobs were hard enough) can NOT have some major issues with PTSD. I have a little tiny bit of experience with that in my personal life.
In the Air Force, I was in aircraft maintenance. Climbed around on maintenance t-stands all the time, working very high in the air, on C5 airplanes and C141s. I seemed to be all right while I was still in the military, but after I got out, it's like I got a "case of the collective willies" to quote a Far Side cartoon that I just love, and now I have a very exaggerated fear of heights. I can't climb two steps on a ladder without starting to shake, and have turned into a very white-knuckle flyer, whenever I have to take a plane trip anywhere.
The other PTSD example I want to relate is something that happened to me in 1996 or so. I was driving to pick up my sister from her swing-shift job on a VERY cold night in January, and the choke sort of froze open on my car (30 below that night, and a little compact car). So I'm driving on a very icy street, and all of a sudden the choke just froze wide open and suddenly I'm doing 90 down a street with a 35 MPH speed limit. And I couldn't stop. Had to brake..........hard........and thank God and Sonny Jesus that I was able to stop on this icy and slippery street. And even when I stopped and slammed the car in "park" I still couldn't get the engine to stop revving. Had to turn off the engine and have the car towed, and that was back before I had a cell phone. Had to flag down a passing motorist and explain what happened. (And bless all Minnesotans, they are quick to jump to the aid of any traveller in distress in the winter.)
Well, for weeks after that, I couldn't go over 30 MPH without having a stress reaction. Freeway driving was ABSOLUTELY out of the question. And it sort of STILL is for me, after 12 or so years. If I get on the freeway, and start doing over 50, my foot starts to shake on the gas pedal, and my hands get too sweaty to hold the steering wheel.
I haven't gotten to the point where these two things cripple me with fear so much that I CAN'T fly or drive on the freeway, but they do make it very difficult.
So I ask you - if these two things could reduce me to being semi-dysfunctional - these two things which don't even begin to APPROACH the stress of being in combat, never knowing where the next IED or ambush is coming from - plus the idea that you have to kill people to stay alive - well, then, what must it be like for these returning veterans? Or any of them really. I sort of wonder that any of them have any sanity left at all.
But their homelessness is their own fault, according to my righty coworker. They should just suck it up and get over it. I notice HE never enlisted to serve in the WAR. To give him that much credit though, he is hugely against the war. But still, that attitude just shows a massive disconnect with the real problem, in my opinion.
Bill O'Reilly ought to be ashamed of himself. But then, I guess that goes without saying. :):):)