Losing the Battles at Home

I checked my email in the middle of the night as I’m prone to do and found a note from a friend informing me of the death of another Iraq veteran. She had killed herself. She had returned home from the horrors of war but couldn’t endure staying alive once home.

I didn’t know who the vet was until a day or so later. I kept remembering the faces of the Iraq veterans I marched with from Mobile to New Orleans back in 2006 and prayed it hadn’t been one of them. But that made no sense, either. It was still another young life stolen from this country by the masters of war who have betrayed all the young troops they sent to their illegal and immoral war.

The suicide of veterans hasn’t been a well hidden secret by the war-mongers. The secondary body count of war stacks up by the month and mental health experts voice an alarm they failed to voice when this war first began.

After multiple deployments and separations from family and friends the American military has reached a crisis of fatigue and disillusionment not known since Vietnam. Only this crisis exceeds the one seen in the troops of Vietnam. PTSD, traumatic brain injury and suicides are coming at a far greater rate than seen in Vietnam. The VA and the military healthcare systems have failed to keep up following years of cuts from a Congress and Executive Branch long ago out of touch with the real people they send to die.

The sons and daughters of America dying in the dirty little war for oil and profit aren’t the sons and daughters of the American “elite” and rich. They are the sons and daughters of the urban centers of America, the farmlands of America and the disappearing middle-class of America.

The ultimate betrayal of the American young is that few of the old cynical bastards in government have ever put their lives on the line for the “homeland” they constantly claim to protect. The regime of the Bush administration has fomented fear and hysteria but a closer look at the architects of war will show they “were too busy” or had other reasons not to serve in the military they so easily send to die.

The voluntary military created to avoid the resistance caused by the draft in Vietnam has allowed most Americans to “go shopping at the mall” while soldiers, Marines, sailors and airmen and women soak the desert sands with their blood.

Yellow ribbons adorn the SUV’s and ever larger oil and gas consuming trucks and cars of this nation while the forgotten volunteers die to protect the continued gluttony and consumption by the drivers claiming to “support” the troops.

The silence of the American public is the greatest betrayal to these troops. They still allow the Bush regime to commit their criminal acts and steal their Constitutional rights. They still continue to allow sleazy politicians of both parties to sell their souls and influence to the corporate masters of war without holding them accountable. They still allow fear and jingoistic hysteria to immobilize them. They still allow corporations to steal their wages and benefits while the corporate profit margins reach the highest levels in history.

The silence of the moral leaders of this nation is a compelling repudiation of their morality. Church leaders fall in line with Bush and his group of evangelical fanatics in apparent attempt to gain advantage against the Islamic world and to reap profit from a voucher system for the failing public schools. They fail to lead against a corrupted government that time and again has allowed injustice and oppression to flourish. They fail to implicate the Bush administration for their neglect of the poor, the hungry and homeless.

Halliburton, KBR, Bechtel and Blackwater will forever be known as the beneficiaries of American tax payer dollars going down the drain. A trillion dollars later, Iraq still remains a country without an infrastructure and worse off than it was before the great boondoggle of “shock and awe”. 8 billion dollars left in the hands of Paul Bremer somehow came up missing and unaccounted for. Blackwater bullies start a riot in Fallujah, get killed and the entire city is bombed back to the Stone Age. Halliburton/KBR are given no bid contracts, hire slave labor and skim millions if not billions by charging two to three times to haul oil as the local Iraqi oil company. Empty tankers escorted by American troops are sent out onto roads full of IED’s and possible ambushes simply to justify billing millions of dollars for work not done.

Meanwhile young American troops are getting head injuries, amputations and mental trauma in an unjustified war and return home to shallow promises of care. Many present with classic signs of PTSD and are court-martialed for bad conduct or given personality disorder diagnoses. Instead of treatment they are discharged and made ineligible for benefits.

The abuses of troops following wars are nothing new. From WWI to Iraq the American people have promised their war veterans they would be taken care of when they returned. Following every war the veterans were left to fend for themselves or subjected to bureaucratic stalls to prevent them from getting what had been promised.

Mustard gas, nerve gas, Agent Orange and depleted uranium are only a small list of toxic and deadly agents troops have been subjected to during the many wars of protecting American “freedoms”. Not only are few veterans given the necessary treatment but the nations polluted by the toxins are left to care for the innocents subjected to them. The numbers of innocent are ten times more than the troops affected.

Over 800,000 individuals are still waiting for entry into the VAMC system for needed care. Most are Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. Of the 230,000 individuals from those wars who have gained some form of treatment at the VA, 84,000 have been diagnosed with mental health problems. The stories of young men and women dying on return from combat grow. The stories of spouses and children abused by untreated veterans from these wars grow. Stories of homicide, substance abuse, acts of violence and other adjustment problems on return from combat grow.

New studies, new reports and new investigations reveal what every veteran knows. The systems meant to support, to treat and to welcome back the young men and women sent to the killing fields of war aren’t doing the job.

Imagine being the parent or spouse or child of one of these veterans who survived the combat only to come home and lose the battle for life in a dark cloud of despair that leads to suicide. Imagine how much despair and hopelessness it takes to reach a decision to end your own life.

Politicians use “support the troops” as a mantra to show their patriotism, flag wavers use yellow ribbons to say support the troops, peace activists let the troops speak against the war but seldom about their problems, mental health experts decry the conditions of the care available and everybody says they want the best for them but each day more die in despair or their rage boils over and ruins a life.

These expressions of concern ring hollow. The actions needed to avoid another young woman who recently killed herself or another young man who got in a stand off with police is missing. That is the stark testimony of how we really support the troops.



William T. Leichner, RN

USMC combat veteran (Vietnam ’67-’69)