by Chaplain Kathie
Wounded Times Blog
August 13, 2012
We are heading into the 11th anniversary of complete, utter shame and most Americans don't even know it.
It wasn't September 11th when every defense this nation had failed in 2001. Americans came together in a way they had not united since the last time this nation was attacked in Pearl Harbor.
Our shame began on this day.
Oct 7, 2001 President Bush announces military action in Afghanistan
On this day in 2001, less than a month after al-Qaida terrorists flew commercial jets into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, President George W. Bush announces that American troops are on the offensive in Afghanistan. The goal of Operation Enduring Freedom, as the mission was dubbed, was to stamp out Afghanistan's Islamic fundamentalist Taliban regime, which had aided and abetted al-Qaida and its leader, Osama bin Laden, a Saudi national who lived in the Afghan hills and urged his followers to kill Americans.
This is the result.
For the Week December 29, 2003- January 2, 2004; Scorecard Rating Cases Pending: 351,431, Total Appeals Requiring Adjudicative action 130,791, Percent Pending over 180 Days 24.2%.
With troops in two wars no one planned for the wounded.
"The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, is directly proportional to how they perceive the veterans of earlier wars were treated and appreciated" -- George Washington
In 1776 the Continental Congress sought to encourage enlistments and curtail desertions with the nation’s first pension law. It granted half pay for life in cases of loss of limb or other serious disability. But because the Continental Congress did not have the authority or the money to make pension payments, the actual payments were left to the individual states.
This obligation was carried out in varying degrees by different states. At most, only 3,000 Revolutionary War veterans ever drew any pension. Later, grants of public land were made to those who served to the end of the war.
In 1789, with the ratification of the U.S. Constitution, the first Congress assumed the burden of paying veterans benefits. The first federal pension legislation was passed in 1789. It continued the pension law passed by the Continental Congress.
By 1808 all veterans programs were administered by the Bureau of Pensions under the Secretary of War. Subsequent laws included veterans and dependents of the War of 1812, and extended benefits to dependents and survivors.
There were 2,200 pensioners by 1816. In that year the growing cost of living and a surplus in the Treasury led Congress to raise allowances for all disabled veterans and to grant half-pay pensions for five years to widows and orphans of soldiers of the War of 1812. This term later was lengthened.
A new principle for veterans benefits, providing pensions on the basis of need, was introduced in the 1818 Service Pension Law. The law provided that every person who had served in the War for Independence and was in need of assistance would receive a fixed pension for life. The rate was $20 a month for officers and $8 a month for enlisted men.
Prior to this legislation, pensions were granted only to disabled veterans.
President Lincoln understood this.
“To care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow, and his orphan,” President Lincoln affirmed the government’s obligation to care for those injured during the war and to provide for the families of those who perished on the battlefield.
Civil War Legacy
When the Civil War broke out in 1861, the nation had about 80,000 war veterans. By the end of the war in 1865, another 1.9 million veterans had been added to the rolls. This included only veterans of Union forces. Confederate soldiers received no federal veterans benefits until 1958, when Congress pardoned Confederate servicemembers and extended benefits to the single remaining survivor.
The General Pension Act of 1862 provided disability payments based on rank and degree of disability, and liberalized benefits for widows, children and dependent relatives. The law covered military service in time of peace as well as during the Civil War.
The act included, for the first time, compensation for diseases such as tuberculosis incurred while in service.
Union veterans also were assigned a special priority in the Homestead Act of 1862, which provided Western land at $1.25 an acre.
The year 1862 also marked the establishment of the National Cemetery System, to provide burial for the many Union dead of the Civil War.
The Consolidation Act in 1873 revised pension legislation, paying on the degree of disability rather than the service rank. The Act also began the aid and attendance program, in which a disabled veteran is paid to hire a nurse or housekeeper.
What ended up happening because the care for the wounded was not planned for was veterans living in shame. Oh, we don't like to talk about that fact in polite society. That would ruin our pride as Americans willing to cheer the few, the brave, the defenders of our freedom we feel so justified in celebrating on July 4th every year. To think of the price paid to acquire it is as distasteful as to be reminded of the fact we have not paid it while veterans suffer.
On one hand we try to do the right thing. President Obama made it easier to obtain disability compensation for Agent Orange and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, but on the other hand, there were not enough claims processors, doctors and nurses working for the VA to take care of the veterans already seeking treatment and compensation. The increased staff was too slow to come and too few to make up for the years when more and more disabled veterans were being created in two wars.
We can talk about the backlog of claims and think it is terrible but that is putting it mildly. When they cannot work after being wounded doing their "jobs" in combat, they cannot pay their bills. That brings shame to them as the phone rings and it is yet one more bill collector they have to listen to when no one is listening to them. Shame when they have to go to their mailbox and fear what they will find waiting for them. Then more shame when they have to tell their children they will have to move out of their homes and under the roof that belongs to someone else.
We do a lot of talking about the stigma of PTSD and we try very hard to get them to understand that PTSD is nothing to be ashamed of, but we fail to notice that we bring shame onto them when they have to wait as long as they do without income to pay their bills.
When you think about how many years we have been "taking care" of the veterans in this country, we'd get it right by now but we are not even close.
Now some politicians want to make all of this worse by cutting the VA budget and others want to turn over the VA to private corporations that will make money off our wounded. When 92% of the population of this nation cannot take care of the 8% willing to defend it, we are all to blame for every single veteran waiting for what George Washington said had to be done.
