The Military Teaches Soldiers Strength; the VA Teaches Veterans to Beg

This article originally appeared on The Daily Beast on 30 August 2013.

I come from a family of combat vets. We have all been fortunate enough to make it home, from WWII, Vietnam, and for me, Iraq. Military service is a family tradition, as is bitching about the VA. Dinner conversations include horror stories about wait times, neglect, and endless red tape. Often lost in the cycle of stories about VA screw-ups and VA reforms (inevitably followed by more stories of VA screw-ups) is the demoralizing affect that the process has on individuals by taking the very values the military teaches—integrity, hard work, accountability—and undermining them by making veterans act like beggars.

The term “red tape” in America actually derives from Civil War veterans’ records being bound together in the stuff. The story of veterans getting stiffed by the government is an American tradition going back at least 150 years. In the present day, while bill payments can be done online and any song ever recorded is instantly accessible, we are still using a paper-based VA system that has the upshot of being noncompatible with the Department of Defense system used for tracking active-duty soldiers.

Veterans are proud characters, used to standing on their own feet. And while self-sufficiency is a central part of the military ethos, reintegrating into civilian life can be difficult and require some assistance, particularly for those with injuries and mental traumas incurred during their service.

Only 0.5 percent of Americans have served in the post-9/11 era, compared with 9 percent during the height of WWII. The burden of fighting for the country continues to fall on the shoulders of the few. When veterans have to fight for the benefits they are owed, it alienates them even further from the rest of the country that did not serve.

Following multiple tours, veterans can come home and feel isolated in their own communities. It’s difficult enough discussing their time overseas with friends and neighbors; most are in no rush to introduce a new uncomfortable topic: problems with the VA over disability ratings and payment. The outcome is that they become further estranged and often bitter both toward the government that fails to honor its commitments and the civilian population that has not fought harder to force the issue.

How can insurance companies and banks—also large organizations processing thousands of compensation claims daily—succeed in processing within reasonable time frames but the VA cannot? The answer, simply, is a lack of political will and accountability.

The VA once had to close a facility because the huge number of files piled up made the building structurally unsound and unsafe to work in. Recent congressional testimony revealed that the Baltimore VA office was late on 81 percent of its claims, though speed may not be the answer, given the additional revelation that errors were made in 26 percent of claims processed by that office.

Asking for help is hard enough; making vets act like supplicants with their hands out is an insult.
As soldiers, veterans were used to counting on the government. Paychecks came on time and family health care was readily available. Everything they needed to do their job was made available—if not immediately and in perfect order, at least predictably and with a system of accountability for when things went wrong. Imagine the position of a veteran who leaves that sort of environment, finds that the benefits promised as job payment are suddenly unavailable, that the government reneged on its word and the only option for recourse involves automated systems and faceless bureaucrats.

It often goes like this: You visit a VA facility, file a claim, and wait months for an acknowledgment by mail. You submit relevant medical evidence, service records, and statements supporting your claim and wait months for another acknowledgment. Repeat this process several more times as you’re asked for additional evidence.

Your claim file may be shuffled between different VA facilities in different cities or it may be lost completely—keep in mind that none of this is digitized. The VA and the post office: the last two true paper pushers left in America.

Meanwhile, your life goes on. Your service-related injuries may become worse. The VA can’t cope with changes in contact details or conditions, so God forbid you move or have a new development not documented in the papers you submitted months ago. After dealing with all of this, often the VA will reject the claim outright and the process begins again with an appeal. Even if it is approved there may be an unexplained delay or error in receiving payment.

You are not entitled to be kept informed about the progress of your claim; calling their office won’t help. You may write to the VA, but you will either receive no reply or an automated response. You may try to use the VA’s eBenefits online system to check your status and submit evidence, but it is never updated. You will find, if you were told something in a previous communication with the VA, that it may be wholly untrue but there is no special effort made by the VA to correct mistakes.

The VA, despite repeated claims of its reform, remains mysterious to those who depend on it and the process can makes veterans feel small and powerless. For many the idea of asking for help is hard enough, but making them feel as if they are supplicants, with their hands out for a favor, is an insult. Add to this the thinly veiled accusations by some that the system is filled with false claims and veterans are “freeloaders” and the insult becomes unbearable.

Now, in the wake of Congress’s self-imposed sequestration, some think-tankers, career civil servants, and congressional staffers on both sides of the political spectrum are pushing for trimming veterans’ and military benefits. Veterans’ benefits have been spared from sequestration directly but are being eyed indirectly by bean counters who seem unbothered by asking vets to sacrifice even more for their country.

Veterans’ benefits are not over-generous entitlements. Entitlement programs such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are open to every citizen who pays into them, and even some who do not, and troops pay these taxes like everyone else. Veterans’ benefits such as VA health care are earned through years of service and designed to care and compensate for injuries and losses incurred while serving. These benefits are not a luxury or the thanks of a grateful nation; they are part of a service contract.

Being a veteran in America has never been an easy road. We win the wars but come home to see our own battles lost every time. From the red tape of the Civil War, the WWI veterans’ bonus march, Agent Orange in Vietnam, and the newest generation’s continuing fight against post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury, unemployment, homelessness, and suicide, justice for American veterans is slow to come. It’s an American tradition overdue for change.

U.S. Military owes more to combat Joes than a four-star General

This article originally appeared in The Guardian on 14 November 2012.

The pressure on those in positions of great responsibility is tremendous. Although constantly surrounded, they are, in fact, alone. Men like General David Petraeus and General John Allen could never live up to the myths that surround them, pedestals they never asked to be placed upon as fame-seekers do – though, certainly in Petraeus' case, they haven't shied from it. To expect them to live up to the standards of perfection others have set for them is an impossible task no one could succeed at. They're not saints. They're soldiers. Marines.

Yet, at some point, "celebrity generals" pass out of the realm of being troopers and into being politicians. Similar uproar occurred when President Obama required General Stanley McChrystal, another admirable commander, to resign after he and his staff publicly criticised the commander-in-chief, a well-known "don't" in the military. That was a case of over-confidently taking shots in the press. The Petraeus affair is worse, in that it may have presented a real threat to national security as an opportunity for a foreign intelligence service to exploit.

I'm a two-tour army veteran of the Iraq war. I've spent the majority of my adult life as a soldier. We're no angels. Guys and girls like me come in any colour, from inner-city or rural America, places like the south side of Chicago or Lovelady, Texas. We're regular middle- or lower-class kids (average age: 19). Some joined for college money; some to get away from home; others out of a sense of duty. We like to fight, we like to swear, get tattoos, and we enjoy a good drink. We remain pretty much anonymous. We don't have biographers or make it onto the social circuit.

We're the absolute backbone of the country – Uncle Sam's misguided children. We're the men and women without any of the advantages in life. We're not supposed to succeed, but we do. In fact, it's the very flaws in each of our individual characters that make it all the more extraordinary what the US military has achieved in its 236 years. As we're reminded every Veteran's Day, victory was never certain and the sacrifices by our troops are great. These were the men and women fighting in Afghanistan while this melodrama was going on back home.

One can see how allowances can be made for the personal indiscretions of such people. Yet, I somehow can't help but feel let down by the expanding circle of this controversy, which has brought down General Petraeus and threatens to do the same to General Allen. I expected more of them, and the behaviour thus far revealed seems petty and melodramatic – a military soap opera complete with affairs, threatening notes, twins and fancy parties.

There are some who believe that this affair is nothing compared to the work General Petraeus has done for the country. Despite the great respect I have for the general, I find myself less willing to grant such allowances.

It is a military principle that a leader cannot impose a standard on others he doesn't impose on himself. This situation started out innocently enough, but seems to have gotten out of control. As director of an intelligence agency, the general would certainly have seen the danger this scenario presented if he had been looking at it from the outside. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper recognised that – and required Petraeus' resignation.

General Petraeus is widely respected by the military and veterans. But he is utterly exalted in both liberal and conservative Washington circles, which see him as a sort of noble warrior-philosopher, with credentials from West Point, Princeton and Georgetown. I was taught in the military that none of us is indispensable. We're all cogs in the wheel, and two minutes after we walk out the door, there will be an adequate replacement. The machine keeps going. The success or failure of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and of the United States as a whole, do not depend upon the fate of one or two men, no matter how exemplary their service. This country is stronger than that.

In fact, as study of our recent military campaigns has gone on, we have arguably been successful in many respects, despite the failures and inadequacies of some of our top military commanders and elected leadership. The credit for our limited successes should go to the great mass of regular, everyday troops who have been called upon to be not just soldiers, but police officers, doctors, aid workers, public works directors and social scientists.

The tough kids with high school diplomas got it done, not the administration in Washington, Ivy League professors, the brass in the Pentagon or generals at garden parties. These average Americans have done more than was asked of them and theirs should be all the credit.

The combat Joes are the ones who have been let down by this scandal. General Petraeus shouldn't have been placed on an exalted pedestal, even if he welcomed it. That very isolation may have clouded his judgment and created the risk of a security breach. In the end, though, he is a man just like other men: he is a cog in the wheel and the United States will go on without General Petraeus.

The Silent Killer Among Our Troops

This post originally appeared on the Intrepid Life Brewing blog on 24 September 2012.

There is a silent epidemic killing U.S. servicemembers and veterans in America. It takes out a platoon of soldiers each month. Around a battalion of veterans falls victim to it monthly. When you speak to people about the statistics their first reaction is disbelief. Unfortunately, the numbers are correct. This killer is suicide. Eighteen veterans attempt suicide each day. In most months, fifteen to thirty active duty soldiers, sailors, Marines, or airmen commit suicide. In some months, such as July 2012, more troops are lost to suicide than to combat.

Multiple combat deployments, PTSD/TBI, depression, and family or financial troubles cause great hardship. It is indisputable that the military can be a hard life. Men and women who come home and hang up their uniform to enter the civilian world find themselves on new and unfamiliar terrain. America’s current economic troubles don’t help any and young veterans have struggled in particular to find work, more so than their non-veteran counterparts. All of these contribute to the suicide problem.

Recognizing the problem, President Obama has issued an executive order increasing the number of mental health professionals at the VA, increasing cooperation with local community mental health care providers, and increasing funding for research into the problem. Some in Congress have also taken up the issue in hearings and legislation. However, the VA already has thousands of vacant positions for mental health professionals and creating more may not be enough help. Additionally, fights over cuts in federal spending may mean cuts to VA funding in coming years. Whatever the barrier is that is keeping these mental health jobs open must be removed and these positions filled. Cutting funding for vets programs just when a new generation of veterans needs it most is irresponsible.

Funding for veterans programs must not fall victim to cuts. This is a problem that is not going away and ignoring it will likely make it worse. There are things worth paying for. Using taxpayer dollars to ensure someone is there for those who were there when the country needed them is one of these things. This silent epidemic must be stopped. If we continue to treat those who fight for the country so poorly there may be no one there to answer the call of duty.