Fellow Veterans: So Many More Of Us.

In My Humble Opinion
1

I hope I can make my point without going into too many directions, so y’all try to bear with me, okay?

My Dad was a WWII vet (82nd Airborne), and that was back when the GI Bill meant something.

The came the “Korean Conflict”, and, unless I’m way off base, the Bill was still functioning, right? (Please correct me, if not).

Then came Viet Nam: The stupidest of all wars, and we got our asses not only kicked, but we were sent home with out tails between our legs, and our fighting men and women got spit on in airports by so-called “Flower Children”.

But with Viet Nam, I believe the Bill began to falter, and there just wasn’t enough money to take care of all of us, resulting in veterans on street corners begging for spare change.

And now?

Well, you figure it out: how many wars since then have we fought and are still fighting (and, IMO, losing)?

And what’s happened to the GI Bill, and more importantly, how are we doing taking care of our valiant men and women who come home (if not in a casket) from this war worn out and maimed?

So now we have this trillion dollar deficit (how many trillions? I forgot - 13?), and a 12 member “super-panel” (have you seen those people??? They look like they’re on their last legs, dammit!) formed to see where we can cut back to save so many trillions in the next 10 years.

AARP is writing me emails (I’m 61) telling me to write my Congressperson and warn them that they’d better NOT touch Social Security or SSDI, because we’ll remember them come voting time.

Well, personally, I don’t think we need to worry about that: if they cut Social Security, we’re going to see the goddamndest battle since the Revolution, mark my words.

But (and here’s my point: thanks for hanging in there with me! :)) what if, instead of that one dollar we’re asked to give to the presedential election fund on our income taxes, we’re asked to give that buck to the VA?

I’d do it. Hell, I’d even give $5.00 off my Social Security check to the VA, deficit be damned!

Do any of y’all think our young fighting men and women were/are concerned about the deficit as they risk their lives every day? I don’t think so, but I do think they are thinking of their wives, husbands and children once they get home and are discharged.

The only thing I have left on MY GI Bill is care at my local veteran’s hospital and that copper plaque they lay on your grave when you die. I used up my education portion, and never wanted my buying a house part anyway, so I’m fine.

I’d just like to make sure our sons and daughters will be fine too.

Thanks for reading this, and if I veered off-course a time or two (or three!), I apologize.

Quasi

2

This didn’t happen.

As to the GI Bill, it still exists. The phenomenon of veterans ending up in a bad way isn’t for a lack of free tuition, it’s because veterans weren’t getting the medical care and therapy they needed to recover from war. You can’t make good use of the educational benefits of the GI Bill if you’re unable to get your life together because of wounds suffered in war. College isn’t something you can throw money at to solve; it’s something that requires a degree of physical and mental stamina.

This sort of problem absolutely was not new to the Vietnam war. A lot of WWII and Korea vets were left by the wayside, too, but nobody wanted to discuss the issue.

3

FWIW, the last two Congresses passed a bunch of expansions to the GI Bill, several parts of which are now coming into effect now. So more money is being put into veterans benefits even as we speak.

4

Yeah, the current GI Bill is amazing. Without it I would not be able to go to college.

5

What didn’t happen?

And as for the other parts of what I wrote, as I hoped, my Doper pals came through with clarifications and corrections. I never mind this, and I always bow to better minds than mine.

Q

6

He’s referring to the spitting. There is always a loud debate about whether or not it ever really happened, or if it was just a metaphor for Vietnam vets being generally ignored or denigrated for going over there. I believe it’s the latter, but YMMV.

7

I don’t think there are more veterans. During WWII, almost every able-bodied man in the US was doing military service, with a large percentage in the battlefield or on the seas. Presently about 1/10th of 1% of the US population is serving in the military outside of US soil. About 1/4 of the US military personnel is serving in combat zones.

However, it used to be that soldiers would do their service, whether in the battlefield or rear-echelon, get out and get on with the rest of their lives. Now they seem to want to be supported for the rest of their lives for the service that they volunteered for. Remember, during WWII, Korea and Vietnam it was a drafted military. Now the military is made up of people who made a choice, for whatever reason, to serve. And they still get the GI Bill, and many other services.

My father, brother, all 3 brothers-in-law, my sister and my step-father all served in the military. My brother still uses the VA for some of his healthcare needs. But mostly they got out of the service and started living their civilian lives.

The government can’t subsidize every person cradle to grave. I believe that if you are permanently disabled due to your military service, you should receive disability payments. If you are injured but can be trained to do a useful job that makes you a living, the government should pay for that training. Otherwise, you were paid for your job and you get the other benefits the military offers. Use them to get on with your life.

And, statistics aside, I often wonder how many of the people who stand on the street corners with signs that say “homeless veteran” are really vets.

StG

8

The whole spitting-on-veterans-in-the-airports thing is fiction. Come on, we’ve had like a hundred threads on this subject. It absolutely did not happen as a matter of course and if it even happened on very rare occasions nobody seems able to come up with a verified example.

StGermain makes a good point; there’s simply no way that veterans make up as large a percentage of the population now as they used to, now that the WWII generation is dying. The U.S. armed services in 1945 was postiively gigantic, ten times bigger than it is today (and that from a substantially smaller population.)

9

Okay. I’ll step out of the “spitting on vets” thing.

Your second paragraph, however, seems to be missing the phrase “relatively speaking”, because if you’re sticking with what you’ve written, then you’re telling me there’s no problem at all with our country taking care of its veterans. Is that what you’re telling me, RickJay? Because if it is, I have the following bit of information for you: The VA is currently buidling a satellite clinic right across the street from where we live, and I plan to volunteer there as soon as it is ready.

Heretofore, the nearest place for vets to go has been to the VA Hospital in Atlanta. I have a very close Navy retired friend who makes that trip monthly and hear about his visits constantly. No, he has no complaints, in fact he LOVES going there, but he DOES mention the paperwork nightmare he has to endure and the fact that he and his wife may as well as make it an early to as late as possible visit when they go. He IS being taken care of, though and I am sure he’d agree with you, were he to see what you’ve written, but I don’t.

I will report back, and if there is no problem that I can trace back and/or document, you and everyone here will get a total retraction of what I have written. Is that fair?:slight_smile:

Thanks, my friend!

Q

10

I was recently reading Google News Archive and came across scanned newspapers from my hometown in the 1940’s. This newspaper, every week, listed the names and addresses (supplied by relatives) of every person in the military at the time from each town that the paper served. There were a lot of names–about 150 from my hometown, a town that had less than 1000 people at the time. Probably just about every young man, and there were a few women’s names, too. The percentage involved is rather stunning, especially when compared to today.

If we have trouble taking care of veterans today, it cannot be because there are more of them.

11

No. I wrote nothing of the sort and do not see how you could have gotten that.

  1. It is fact that there can’t possibly be as many veterans now asd there were in the 1950s. It’s just plain math.

  2. That does not mean veterans are being properly taken care of.

Your OP is saying that the problem is, at least in part, that there are so many veterans that the GI Bill can’t work. But that is obviously incorrect; there aren’t any more veterans than there were when they passed the GI Bill, and relative to the population there are far fewer. But that’s not relevant anyway. It doesn’t matter if there’s 1 million veterans, 5 million, or 25 million;** if the STRATEGY for meeting their needs is wrong, their needs will not be met.** You can spend a skillion billion dollars on a problem but if you aren’t spending it right, you’re going to continue screwing up.

12

You may need to take the “mod hat” off for a few, RickJay. :wink:

Okay. As long as you and I agree that the strategy for taking care of them is wrong, are we also in agreement there’s room for improvement in taking care of them?

Q