I never cease to be amazed at how ungrateful we are for the service of our combat veterans.
In the aftermath of the Vietnam War thousands of veterans began dying from strange forms of cancers never seen before.
When it became apparent that the cancers were the result of their exposure to the herbicide Agent Orange designed and used by our government, the government denied all responsibility and resisted any discovery of their role in its use and manufacture for decades.
I have written extensively about this abdication of responsibility many times over the past decade following the death of my closest friend, Larry Hackett, from cancer caused by Agent Orange.
While almost fifty years has passed since the government exposed its soldiers to this poison, the Veterans Administration, after years of denying that the chemical caused these deaths, has now begun to acknowledge the claims of veterans for disability benefits for the damage it has caused.
Congressman John Katko and former Congressman Dan Maffei each introduced the Lawrence J. Hackett Jr, Vietnam Veterans Agent Orange Fairness Act. It would provide a comprehensive study of measures including compensation for veterans and their survivors.
The Act has languished in the House Veterans Affairs Committee. It has two co-sponsors there and none in the Senate despite entreaties to both New York senators and other serving on the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee.
Still, I continue to read the all too frequent obituaries of men dying in their sixties from cancer, who are Vietnam veterans. I don’t guess at the cause of the cancer anymore.
The government fares no better when it comes to veterans returning from Afghanistan, Iraq or the Gulf War.
We witnessed scandals in the Veterans hospitals involving wait times, lack of psychological, psychiatric and counseling services for veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, resulting from the horrors that they witnessed or survived while serving in these wars. The suicide rate among these veterans is staggering.
This past week, the Los Angeles Times reported that the Pentagon has been demanding that veterans of the California National Guard pay back thousands of dollars of re-enlistment bonuses and tuition benefits paid to them as an inducement to re-enlist for additional combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The newspaper stated that as many as ten-thousand veterans are affected. It published stories involving veterans who were injured and awarded medals for service during these tours. Many of them have had their wages garnished and judgements affecting their credit filed against them. Some have lost their homes because of this. Others have lived on a bare subsistence level as they paid back thousands of dollars.
In most of the cases it appears that the affected veterans lived up to their commitment and served successive combat tours.
Needless to say, they feel betrayed.
They have good reason to feel betrayed.
According to the New York Times, when California National Guard officials sought relief from Congress several years ago, it refused to act because of the cost of forgiving these debts.
Shortly after the Times article appeared, The Secretary of Defense, Ashton Carter, ordered the Pentagon to suspend these collection efforts until a new review process could be instituted.
No mention is made of making whole those veterans who have already paid back the bonuses or benefits or been subject to garnishments and other onerous debt collection measures.
There are two elements to this crisis that ought not to be forgotten.
The first is that the bonuses were paid to National Guardsmen to induce them into accepting a combat mission overseas.
Most people enlist in a state National Guard unit because they want to serve in domestic crisis, such as climate disasters, that occur within their state. None of them anticipated the repeated deployments to foreign combat zones such as Iraq and Afghanistan as many in the guard have had to endure.
The second is that the repeated deployments were made necessary because the manpower quotas essential to fighting a war in two places could not be met.
The only alternative to repeatedly deploying state National Guard units would be the return to a draft.
If a draft were reinstituted, unlike the Vietnam War, not just sons but daughters would be subject to it.
That would certainly set new terms of debate about the wisdom of our use of military force overseas.
In the meantime, ten-thousand veterans who have been victimized by our government because they accepted bonuses and benefits they accepted in good faith for service they performed will have to wait in financial limbo until the government decides how to make this right.
Ten years ago, as I stood next to my best friend’s casket in a cemetery I saw a member of the military color guard pass a folded flag to his widow and tell her it came “with the thanks of a grateful nation.”
I wanted to scream then.
I want to scream now.
Yes!!!!