My son is an Iraq War veteran with two tours under his belt. When he signed on to the National Guard as a mechanic, I don't think he ever thought he'd end up in a shooting war. After all, the National Guard is supposed to protect the home front and help out in case of disasters, not serve as a back door draft.....or at least that's the way it used to be before George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld (aka the Asses of Evil) got hold of it. So off he went to Iraq in 2004, luckily to a little outpost in Kurd country where the most exciting thing, to hear him tell it, was going out every morning to disentangle the local sheep from the perimeter fence. Of course I did hear rumors of other happenings, because one guy in his company encountered an IED and was flown out to Germany, where he was hospitalized for a long time before he came home permanently disabled. Anything else that happened was kept from us and we only heard the "good" stories, like the time Charlie Daniels visited on his tour of all the places "his" Tennessee soldiers were stationed. But my son seemed to be pretty much okay when he came back and he settled back into his regular full-time job with the Guard and into his regular family life with his wife and son. The second deployment in 2009 was a different matter entirely. He went long stretches without being able to communicate, and when he could (Yahoo Messenger, or rarely, Skype) he just didn't sound like himself, although he tried to. We never found out where he was; the story he told when he came back was that he was co-opted by the Navy SEALs and was at a classified base. That just didn't jibe with the way he acted, and he got worse. Since then, his son has gone back to live with his mother, and his wife has divorced him. He has lost his job with the Guard, plus another job, and he's been hospitalized twice, once on a 72-hour psych hold, and last year with a combination of physical ailments including a severe eye infection and some mobility problems that I don't understand which he relates to something that happened in Iraq but won't talk about. He hides in his apartment and doesn't talk to anyone, doesn't answer his phone, and I suspect doesn't see another human being for days sometimes. My daughter and her husband do the best they can to look after him, take him food and generally look out for him, but they have a family too. At least my daughter knows her way around the VA from dealing with her dad. We all had hopes for the passage of the Clay Hunt Veterans Suicide Prevention Act. You see, my son suffers from PTSD and depression, complicated by alcohol abuse. The reason he ended up on that psych hold was that after a guy who'd been in his outfit and served with him on his last tour committed suicide, my son locked himself in his basement with a gun. Fortunately one of his buddies was able to talk him down and get him to agree to go to the hospital, but a 72-hour hold was the best they could do for him. There isn't a good program for him there. There might be if they had the money, they said. So we hoped. The Clay Hunt bill passed the House unanimously. Then last night, Sen. Tom Coburn, Republican (and lame duck) of Oklahoma, single-handedly blocked that bill from even coming to a vote in the Senate. In a floor speech Monday night, he defended his actions, saying the bill would not accomplish its stated goal and duplicates programs that already exist.
Twenty-two veterans commit suicide or attempt it every day. This bill would address the problem by among other things, creating a peer support and community outreach pilot program to assist transitioning servicemembers as well as a one-stop, interactive website of available resources. It would start a pilot program to repay the loan debt of students in psychiatry so it is easier to recruit them to work at the VA and boost the accountability of mental health care by requiring an annual evaluation of DoD and VA suicide-prevention practices and programs. This is what Coburn in his infinite wisdom decided would not accomplish its stated goal and duplicated programs that already exist, so he single-handedly blocked a vote on it and delayed it for at least 100 days.....during each of which another 22 veterans could commit or attempt suicide. My son could be one of them.
Every morning I wake up and wonder whether my son is still alive. I wonder if it's the day he might decide to reach out for help and it wouldn't be there.....or there would be a busy signal on the line, or a psychiatrist who couldn't see him, or a program that's full. And you wonder why I am so angry that I am ready to personally go after Tom Coburn and commit a felony on him?
Wed Dec 17, 2014 at 3:35 PM PT: For all who expressed concern about my words, rest easy. I am not about to commit any felonies for real. I only said I FELT like it! I am a 71 year old woman of very small stature, for one thing, and for another, I have always worked within the system and protested non-violently when necessary. If a mother's cry from the heart disturbs you that much, perhaps you need to look into your own heart and ask yourself why.