How we treat our veterans defines our national character. In my view, based on my position, my observation within New York State and the country, that we collectively get a failing grade. -- Maj. Gen. John Batiste (USA-ret.)
In the diaries today, former Rep. Tom Andrews introduces the Veterans Trust Fund and the Veterans' Trust Fund Declaration of Support, and along with it this video:
Politicians always say that the toughest decision they have to make is the one to send young men and women to war. The establishment of a Veterans' Trust Fund would put actual meaning behind those words, because it would force lawmakers to actually think about the aftermath of war, not just about sending Americans off to some foreign land, but how they'll be received when they come home. Whether they'll have access to the care and services they need, whether their families can get the assistance they need. It means that lawmakers would have to consider the long term costs and consequences of this decision, and plan for it.
In testimony about the proposal included in the video, Maj. Gen. Batiste said:
Why are we discussing a veterans' trust fund nine years into these wars? We might very well have decided, if we'd done the strategy right, that the ends, ways, and means were in not in balance and therefore this was not a good idea. That at the end of the day is the bottom line.
The lies behind our entrance into the Iraq War aside, would so many lawmakers have been willing to take us there had they considered the aftermath?
- More than 700 US soldiers lost their lives in the military invasion and occupation of Iraq because they had not been provided with Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicles (MRAP), according to an internal US Marine Corps study;
- 565,000 veterans of Iraq or Afghanistan have filed for disability compensation for something that happened to them while in combat;
- In Fiscal Year 2009 there were 1,868 suicide attempts by veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan;
- The Veterans Benefits Administration has a backlog of over 500,000 claims;
- Last year Army Vice Chief of Staff General Peter W. Chiarelli estimated that the Veterans Administration was short as many as 800 behavioral health specialists and 300 substance abuse counselors.
More soldiers are surviving more horrific injuries. That's a testament to the medical teams in the services and the tremendous advances in treating trauma. But it also means more veterans are coming home with much more severe disabilities. That's just the physical injuries. More soldiers have died here at home from suicide than have died in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, coming home to economic distress, a lack of jobs and inadequate support from their government.
That's why Stand with Vets is working to create the Veterans Trust Fund. It would support Americans in uniform who were so callously sent to war by a government that did not adequately plan for huge needs--both in field and here at home--that the wars would create. It would require Congress to build those costs into future Afghanistan funding, hopefully helping to bring that war to and end. But primarily, it would make it more difficult for a President or Congress to get us into another war.
There's no better way to celebrate Veterans Day than by actually supporting veterans. You can do that by signing the Veterans' Trust Fund Declaration of Support.