"I fought for this country. I shed blood for this country. I watched friends die. ...My country shouldn't be doing this to me."
--Herold Noel, 25, Iraq veteran
The way things are going, one of these poor kids is gonna snap one day.
And we'll all be shocked, and blame Arabs. The Terror Alert will go Red. Then it'll turn out to be Joe Trailer Park, and we'll wonder how such a nice young veteran could have done it. And they'll flash Tim McVeigh's picture on the screen a few times, and still, most people will fail to make the connection.
The quote above is from a
CBS News article profiling one soldier who returned from Iraq and soon found himself living in his Jeep with a family to support.
"Why weren't all the lessons of Vietnam learned this time? So there wouldn't be any homeless veterans?" Pitts wanted to know.
"Most of the veterans that we're seeing have a mental health and a substance abuse problem," said Peter Dougherty of the Department of Veterans Affairs. "Those problems are the underlying factors."
Herold was diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Unemployed, married with three kids, he couldn't get a job.
"The physical war is over. The mental war has just begun," he said.
Why weren't the "lessons of Vietnam learned" this time? Or the first Gulf War? Because the same people were in charge of all three, that's why.
That's also why a response to this quiet outrage should be something more effective than streamlining the Department of Veteran Affairs over a period of decades.
Herold Noel received a year of free rent from an anonymous donor who heard his story. So, what if a few of these guys got a little network going? Perhaps start abandonedsoldiers.org, collecting donations for Iraq veterans who need proper counseling, or who have been financially ruined by the war. Maybe a group blog for sharing their experiences and drumming up the kind of publicity that embarrasses and changes the system that has abused them.
Whatever it is, it could be a pre-emptive strike against a future Timothy McVeigh. Guns don't kill people, the Conservative Culture of Death kills people. The cycle of veteran abuse must stop before it starts contributing.