Veterans for Obama? Some now have doubts

I've watched Presidents come and go since Kennedy was shot. I've read just about everything concerning veterans going back to the Vietnam War. I had to because I was too young when my husband was there and I wanted to learn. Since 1982 I have paid attention to what's been going on. Readers of this blog know there are a lot of problems in the DOD and the VA because they read all of this everyday. The suicides, attempted suicides, families falling apart and suffering in the military and among veterans is posted way too often. There are serious problems that needed to be corrected yesterday but no one is talking about how we got here.

The fact is we all allowed it. We let it go on when Bush was cutting the VA budget with two wars producing more wounded and we let the GOP leadership say there wasn't enough money to pay for the wounded with "two wars to pay for" when they were in charge and some Democrats were trying to do something. But it isn't all Bush's fault. We also watched it when Clinton was President and very little was being done to address the homeless veterans issue and Gulf War veterans were suffering without help. We watched it when President G.H.W. Bush greeted the Gulf War veterans back home but then forgot about the illnesses they were complaining about. We watched it when President Reagan didn't do enough to address the Vietnam veterans plight. We watched it when President Carter was in the chair as we watched when Ford took the place of Nixon. Yet it goes back even further as we watched, complained and mostly ignored. Hell, everyone had their own problems when they had problems that mattered to the state of their lives but when it involved someone else, well, that was their problem.

So now we have someone in the office who got it. He understood that there were many problems that needed to be fixed in the DOD and the VA. Things have gotten better but even Obama acknowledges there is a lot more work to be done.

He's trying to do something about homeless veterans when up until the last few years, not many people were even talking about them at all.

He's trying to do something about PTSD and a lot more programs have started.

He's trying to do something about the suicides in the DOD and the VA.

We read about all these reports along with the scandal with appointments being canceled but we also read about what is being done. We read about them at the same time we get emails from friends slamming him without giving him any credit at all. So let's be honest here, he has done a lot for veterans and the military. He should be appreciated for that at least.

That said, his staff is letting him down if the reports from Steve Robinson and the IAVA are true. He is the President and he is in charge of his staff. So where the hell is Rahm Emanuel? What is he doing when all this is going on? He is the Chief of Staff. Obama can set the agenda and his staff is supposed to be following his agenda. Face it, the man has more things going on than taking care of the military and veterans but if he doesn't know his staff is not returning phone calls and emails, then isn't it Emanuel's job to deal with it?

Veterans for Obama? Some now have doubts
Leading military vets who joined the 2008 campaign now complain about White House "deafness" and inaction


Relations between the Obama administration and some elements of the military veterans community, a constituency the Obama campaign carefully cultivated for the 2008 election, have grown distant and, in some cases, icy. Some veterans advocates describe a tangible sense of disenchantment, even among some of Obama's staunchest veteran supporters who actively campaigned on his behalf as part of "Veterans for Obama."

The flagging support among veterans results from a combination of unforced errors by the White House in basic constituency relations, coupled with rising frustration that the Obama administration is not aggressive enough in tackling wartime crises that continue to escalate, like suicides in the military. The damage is serious enough that it threatens to lurk as a political liability for Obama in 2012, since disgruntled surrogates might refuse to help the next time around.

"Suicides are skyrocketing, people are being deployed to war with PTSD, people are being denied their healthcare benefits, and the Obama administration is allowing the Department of Defense to punish people who are suffering from PTSD rather than giving them the medical care they deserve," said Steve Robinson, a retired Army Ranger and longtime veterans advocate who has worked for a number of veterans’ organizations. Robinson closely advised then-Sen. Obama on veterans policy and was prominently featured in a video tribute to Obama made by the campaign that played at the Democrats' 2008 convention in Denver. "I am confident that he believes in this generation and that he is actually putting into practice what he believes," Robinson said about Obama, from a huge TV screen at the convention. The Democratic nominee fought for vets, he added, "by stepping out, by speaking up, by legislating, by holding government accountable to take care of this generation when they send them to war."
read more here
Veterans for Obama