This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: Veterans Issues

  • Too Late Opened, Too Sacred to Be Closed

    The news that a group of WWII veterans and their caring companions had defied a federal closure order and visited the National World War II memorial on the Mall in Washington warmed my and millions of other Americans’ hearts. While it is still uncertain exactly how the barriers were removed, if this Obama administration isn’t completely tin-eared, it is obvious that those barriers should remain removed.

    It took far too long for our WWII memorial to be authorized and constructed; it didn’t open until April 2004, just a year short of six decades after the closing of the worldwide effort, heroism, and sacrifice it was erected to honor. Amazingly, there were those who believed that process to be too hasty even while the men and women the site was to honor were dying in increasing numbers with every year that passed. Fortunately, the memorial was able to open in time for millions of those it honored to experience their nation’s tribute personally.

    One of those who did that was my father-in-law, who at the age of 25 and as a father of two was drafted to serve in the 65th Infantry Division, one of those several unique units whose two-year existence on the world stage was for the sole purpose of storming Fortress Europe. Although he spoke little of his service, he and I shared the bond of both being combat infantrymen, though in vastly different wars. When the memorial opened in 2004, I called him in New Mexico and offered to take him to see it on a guys-only trip. Somewhat to my surprise, he enthusiastically accepted.

    A friend in Virginia, also a Vietnam veteran, agreed to provide local transportation and serve as our Washington guide. That trip turned out to be one of the most memorable and moving events of my life, worth every penny of the cost. As we pushed the wheelchair-bound old warrior around his beautiful memorial, he was beaming with pride and engaging in happy conversation with many others just like him. Unlike my own memorial, that long black, solemn Wall, this striking marble monument was a place of joy and celebration, not one of grief and regret. I feel blessed that I was able to share that experience with my father-in-law and his fellow celebrants.

    From that experience I hold a reverence for that memorial and the waning old warriors it honors, which tells me it is totally dishonorable for the Obama administration to deliberately and spitefully use this sacred site of tribute as nothing more than just another pawn in the political chess game it is now playing with the Republicans in Congress. As commander-in-chief, Barack Obama again demonstrates to the nation and to the world that he is tin-eared, tone-deaf, and totally unqualified when it comes to leading and honoring those who now serve this country as well as those who once did. Only an inexperienced and incompetent fool could fail to recognize that of all the federal edifices in Washington, there are many that could and should be closed before this one: a tribute built decades too late and now too sacred to be closed.

    Crossposted at American Thinker

  • White House denied vets’ exception request

    You remember the World War II vets who stormed the barricades at the World War II Memorial yesterday, right? Well, it seems that they had asked the White House and the Interior Department for permission to see the memorial days before the government shutdown according to the reportage at the Daily Caller;

    “We got the heads up that they will be barricaded and specifically asked for an exception for these heroes,” [Representative Stephen] Palazzo told TheDC. “We were denied and told, ‘It’s a government shutdown, what do you expect?’ when we contacted the liaison for the White House.”

    Palazzo’s office was in touch with the heads of the National Park Service, the Department of the Interior and the Capitol Police. He says all these officials rejected his request to allow the veterans, many of whom are octogenarians and some of whom are in poor health, to attend.

    Palazzo, a Gulf War Marine veteran who has participated in all five of the Honor Flights, blames the White House for making it harder on veterans and playing politics. “At first I thought it was a huge bureaucratic oversight,” Palazzo told The Daily Caller, “but having talked with the officials I can’t help but think this was politically motivated. Honor Flights, which bring WWII veterans to the nation’s memorials, are planned a year in advance and cost anywhere between $80,000 to $100,000. How low can you get with playing politics over our nation’s veterans?”

    The next flight, from Ohio has been threatened with arrest if they try the same thing that the group yesterday did, according to a link sent by Country Singer;

    Honor Flight of Northwest Ohio has a trip scheduled to depart from Toledo next Wednesday, October 9.

    “We will make the call this Friday to determine if the flight is still a go, or if we will have to re-schedule,” [Honor Flight of Northwest Ohio President Lee] Armstrong explains.

    He says they are considering going ahead with the trip even if the government is still on shutdown, but when he called the parks service, he was told they would face arrest.

    Armstrong says, “I said, are you kidding me? You’re going to arrest a 90/91-year-old veteran from seeing his memorial? If it wasn’t for them it wouldn’t be there. She said, ‘That’s correct sir.’”

    When he asked for her name, he says she did not give it to him and then promptly hung up the phone.

    Yeah, I guess the shutdown isn’t painful enough, so the Obama Administration is going to make it so.

  • Vets take back their WWII Memorial

    WWII vets storm ramparts

    The Washington Post reports that ninety veterans stormed the barricades at the World War II Memorial in DC today. According to the story, they arrived on an Honor Flight at about 10 o’clock this morning for the explicit purpose of seeing their memorial and, by golly, they did, with help of some Congressmen and the tacit approval of the Park Police;

    “I’m not going to enforce the ‘no stopping or standing’ sign for a group of 90 World War II veterans,” said a U.S. Park Police officer, who declined to give his name. “I’m a veteran myself.”

    The veterans, from Mississippi, were visiting the memorial on the Mall as part of an honor flight program. They had chartered an $80,000 airplane, and their plans were too far advanced to postpone when the government shut down, said Wayne Lennep, spokesman for the Mississippi Gulf Coast honor flights.

    The group arrived at Reagan National Airport at 10 a.m. on a flight from Gulfport, Miss. By 11 a.m., the veterans were on the Mall, where the many memorials and monuments were supposed to be closed.

    “It’s the best civil disobedience we’ve seen in Washington for a long time,” [Rep. Bill Huizenga (R-Mich.)] told the group.

    The German and Japanese Armies didn’t scare them, what are a few barricades?

    Oh, if you have anger issues, stay out of the comments on the WaPo article.

  • Government shutdown & the VA

    The Washington Times reports that Congress passed the latest of a long stream of stop gap bills to continue funding the federal government without actually passing a budget. However, the bill delays Obamacare for a year, which has prompted the White House to announce that the bill is DOA, because you know, the word “compromise” isn’t in their vocabulary as anything that the rest of us would recognize. They delayed the healthcare bill in regards to employers, but not for the rest of us.

    Aided by some Democrats, the GOP passed legislation to repeal a widely despised Obamacare tax on medical devices, to halt the entire health law for a year, and to ensure troops get paid even if the government shuts down.

    The votes send the spending bill back to the Senate, though Majority Leader Harry Reid called the moves “pointless” and has already ruled out negotiating on any of the Obamacare measures. He said he will not accept any strings attached to a bill to keep the government open past the midnight Monday deadline.

    Our buddy, Austin Wright at Politico writes that the House bill contains a provision to keep paying the troops and the DoD civilians who support them;

    The GOP unveiled a bill on Saturday that would ensure service members continue getting paid if Congress is unable to pass a bill to fund the government past midnight Monday, when the fiscal year ends and current appropriations expire.
    Continue Reading

    The measure would also ensure continued pay for civilian employees of the Defense Department and Pentagon contractors who “are providing support to members of the Armed Forces.”

    The Washington Post writes that if the standoff continues for a few weeks, Veterans’ Administration won’t be able to pay the veterans who depend on them;

    During the telephone briefing, the leadership of the House and Senate Veterans Affairs committees were told that VA will run out of money to make compensation and pension payments if a partial shutdown is drawn out for weeks, according to aides to two members of Congress.

    The briefing, which was provided by VA congressional affairs, represents a significant change from what the members had previously been told, and from the information the VA has released to the public, according to congressional officials.

    Some expressed concern during the briefing that veterans had not been given adequate information to prepare for a possible disruption in payments that many depend upon. Some veterans live check to check, they noted.

    Yeah, well, veterans haven’t been given adequate information because no one is talking to us. You’ll notice that the VA’s Ebenefits website is down today for maintenance. But there was nothing about the government shutdown when it was working before 9am today. So, yeah, nice dodge, there VA, but if we’re not getting timely information, it’s because you haven’t bothered to give us any.

    “This is a big reason why it’s critical that the House join with the Senate to act quickly and keep the government open without any political games,” said Sen. Patty Murray, (D-Wash.), who is chairman of the Senate budget committee. “Our nation’s heroes, who are already waiting too long for the benefits they deserve, shouldn’t be held at the mercy of gridlock and dysfunction in Washington, D.C.”

    In other words, we’re being held hostage once again – and this time it’s to save the credibility of that broke-dick Obamacare BS.

  • Media and the angry vet myth

    Our buddy, Alex Horton, wrote in Defense One “When Will the Media Stop Fueling the Angry Vet Narrative?” a favorite subject of ours. Horton tries to separate Nidal Hasan and Aaron Alexis from their veteran labels, but that will probably never happen. Remember James Wenneker von Brunn? He was the 88-year-old who shot a security guard at the Holocaust Museum in June 2009 with the intention of killing a lot more people, but he was stopped by those security guards. The first thing out of the media’s collective mouth was that he was a veteran. von Brunn had been a veteran of freakin’ World War II and hadn’t served since, but it was easier for the media to understand that he did it because he was a veteran.

    Then the was Wade Michael Page who shot up a Sikh Temple in Wisconsin. He was a veteran – he was a Hawk Missile repairman from 1992 to 1998 and was booted with a general discharge for being drunk on duty and AWOL. But, see, he’d wore a uniform, so he was a veteran and that made it all understandable to the press.

    There was Benjamin Colton Barnes who shot two Park Rangers in Washington State last year was a pogue and never heard a shot fired in anger during his service, which ended ignobly, too, but CNN and others loved to show the picture of him with scary black guns and tats. They even warned the public that he was highly trained in survival skills – but he was found dead of hypothermia face down in a stream. Hypothermia is covered on Day One of any survival training. I’m sure that sticking your face in water is pretty near the beginning of the class, too.

    If you watch this video released by the FBI of Aaron Alexis on the prowl in the Navy Yard, veterans can tell the clown had no training in closing with and destroying people;

    He looks like Rosie O’Donnell sneaking up on a cupcake. He chose a shotgun because it takes virtually no training to shoot and hit what you’re shooting at. It’s Joe Bite Me’s weapon of choice, so you know that.

    None of these incidents have anything to do with these people being veterans and it has everything to do with them being off their rockers. But the media is happy to just cram us into the nutty vet cubby hole because it makes it all easy to understand. And they don’t know any veterans personally, so they have no frame of reference outside of Hollywood. But the truth is that everyday millions of successful veterans go to work and do their jobs without intentionally scaring anyone.

  • Well Done, Kentucky

    We give bureaucracies – state and local – a hard time for being impersonal and inefficient.  Most of the time, that’s well deserved.

    But on occasion, they really do deserve a commendation.  This is one of those occasions.

    Recently, the Kentucky State Treasury reunited a veteran’s family with his decorations from World War II.

    The man served in the Pacific during World War II, in the USMC.  He passed away in 1987.

    The decorations and some other items had been placed in a safety deposit box by his wife when he died 26 years ago.  When she passed away approaching 20 years later, the items went unclaimed – and were turned over to the State Treasury.

    The State Treasury located his next of kin, which turned out to be his son.  They returned his father’s medals and other personal items from the safety deposit box to him last week.  One of those “other personal items” was the card authorizing his father to attend the Japanese surrender ceremony in Tokyo Bay on 2 September 1945 and witness same.

    The full article is here.  Go read it for the details.

    Thank, Kentucky.  Well done indeed.

  • Another View on Displaying Your Vet Status

    Yesterday, Jonn posted an article about yet another wannabee that apparently had an entire phony Marine career depicted in decals on the back window of his pickup. Numerous commenters noted that they display little to absolutely nothing on their vehicles or persons with some going so far as to express some degree of contempt for those who do. I’d like to offer a bit of a different perspective on the topic.

    My tour in Vietnam with the 101st Airborne was in ’65-’66. Back stateside, I spent six months with the 82d Airborne and then left the Army to go back to West Texas, get married and return to college on the newly-extended G.I. Bill. Anti-military bias on campus in those days was ran very high and while I didn’t advertise my service with decals or bumper stickers, I didn’t try to hide it either, frequently getting into heated arguments and almost coming to blows with know-nothing little squirts who vociferously opposed the war and despised our military.

    Upon obtaining my degree, I went to work selling pharmaceuticals and because of my military background I soon was promoted into government sales. At that point, I learned quickly that it was good for business to make my clients aware that I had been one of them, could speak their language and understood their limitations in making procurement decisions. To that end, I usually wore a miniature set of jump wings or a miniature division patch as a tie tack or lapel pin. Did I take advantage? Of course I did, but then, when you think about it, not nearly to the extent of using my service to obtain a government job, a perfectly legitimate resume enhancer.

    It was sometime in the early ‘80’s that I began wearing military ball caps when at leisure and putting service connected décor on my vehicles and I did it for a specific reason. I was sick and damned tired of hearing the liberal media depict all Vietnam veterans as drug addicted losers and dropouts who couldn’t cut it in mainstream America. Damn it all, I was a Vietnam veteran and while I might have taken a toke now and then I wasn’t a damned drug addicted loser. I’d worked hard to get a degree and a good job which enabled me to buy a nice home, nice cars and even an ill-advised sailboat; I was a Vietnam veteran who was an American success story and tired of being constantly and wrongly maligned. And there were millions of others out there just like me. So by damned, it was time to wear the colors proudly, and I have done so ever since with 101st, and 82d patches and jump wings caps on my head and veterans’ license plates and frames on my vehicles. Do I flaunt it? Bet your ass, troop, but for what I see as damned good reason.

    And if you think those attitudes towards Vietnam vets don’t continue to exist, you’re dead wrong. Just a five years ago, forty years on, while sitting at a table at the country club, a woman across from me asked the folks at the table, “Oh, did any of you see that poor Vietnam veteran outside the supermarket this afternoon; the one with the sign, who was begging for money?” A couple of others nodded or murmured that they had and she then said, “They’re all like that, you know, just a bunch of pathetic drug addicts who never got over losing.” I’d seen the guy as well and he wasn’t nearly old enough to have served in Vietnam but because he was scruffy, long-haired and wearing a filthy old field jacket, he fit the media-created image that this woman and tens of millions like her believed accurate. Looking across the table, I fixed her with a hard stare and said, “I’m a Vietnam veteran sitting here in your damned country club; you think I’m a pathetic loser?” That shut her smug mouth and presumably taught her a lesson.

    Another thought: All you veterans of our recent wars should give thought to letting your fellow citizens know that you are among them, a part of the fabric of their daily lives. It is all too easy for the American people to forget that there are those of you out there risking it all on their behalf with your families making the accompanying sacrifices. Sure, the TV commercials for wounded veterans appeals to your fellow citizens’ patriotism and generosity, but they also need to know that those who defend them also walk among them and work and play beside them. Screw being invisible and anonymous, allow your presence and contribution to be recognized. Most Americans truly respect your service and are pleased to know that you are just like them, so make them happy to know you are there in their communities, warriors now neighbors, solid anchors to the safety and viability of the environment where their children are being nurtured.

    Look, if you’ve been there, you know that real heroes don’t brag. Those who have fought and had the honor to fight with those warriors who achieved that true hero status, in our eyes, not those of clueless civilians in the media, but honestly judged heroes by their fellow warriors, know that post-battle, the brave don’t boast of their accomplishments. My MoH roommate at Ft. Bragg threatened to kick my ass if I didn’t knock off the questions about how he’d earned the award. I believed him fully capable and shut it down. So, the point is, don’t look at it as bragging but rather as a show of solidarity with your former comrades in arms and a demonstration of pride in your honorable service.

    And you’ll never believe how many conversations your military ball cap will lead to that go something like this, ”Uh, yeah, I wanted to join up, but…”

  • Thoughts about Syria.

    With all this talk about military action in Syria it is a topic of concern for active military. Right now there seems to be more questions then answers. Questions like:

    1. If troops are committed to the ground, how will the threat of insider attacks similar to those that happened in Afghanistan be confronted?

    2. With the VA still in backlog over claims from the conflict from Iraq and Afghanistan, what is the plan of action to ensure military personal wounded/injuries from a military operation in Syria have effective and prompt medical care?

    3.With US troops still in Afghanistan until late 2014 and the reduction in total force size, how is it possible to avoid being overstretched. Especially if the operation becomes extended like the OIF and OEF?

    4.Considering how results from the missile strikes in the Pakistan border in the past ten years, how will a missile strike in Syria have a different outcome then the one that we have been launching for the past few years?

    I mean for me it seems that the current Administration is is having a very hard time ending the conflict in Afghanistan, what would give use the confidence in them in starting/escalating a conflict? Will the ROEs be more realistic in the sense of giving our troops the ability to defend themselves without the fear of a Courts Martial every time they pull the trigger? What happens if troops are committed, will the Administration have the same enthusiasm in supporting the mission? That same enthusiasm that that seems to be lacking in Afghanistan for the past few years.

    Which brings the real question is;

    Why should think that a operation in Syria would not end badly or prolonged involvement considering how things are going in Afghanistan and on the home front for the Veterans of OEF?