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

Category: Veterans Issues

  • More sleight of hand

    I’ve watched with some interest this weekend while Leon Panetta, the Secretary of Defense, entered into talks of sorts with the Vietnamese government over accounting for our 1,284 missing American service members in that country. I know there’s a political motivation, because this administration doesn’t do anything in this election year without some sort of political calculation. Panetta, the guy who spends $32,000 dollars every weekend to fly to his California villa is doing his level best to slash our defensive capabilities and tear to shreds the covenant with veterans over their healthcare. I guess they see this venture with the Vietnamese government as having no downside – they please Vietnam veterans by focusing on this issue and distracting from the defense cuts.

    According to Jennifer Hlad of the Stars & Stripes;

    Accounting for missing servicemembers from the Vietnam War sends an important message to today’s servicemembers, Panetta said: The U.S. will not stop working to fulfill the promise of never leaving a man behind.

    So where have they been the last three non-election years? While I applaud the administration’s recent interest in the MIA/POW issue, and I’ll certainly be pleased if it results in a final accounting of those Americans, I just think it’s funny that it wasn’t important previously, you know, before they started slashing the crap out of the defense budget.

    Of course, we can revel in our (veterans) issues that are finally being addressed by this administration, but we also need to be cognizant of the underlying reasons. We can also be reasonably certain that the importance of these issues will probably fall off of this administration’s radar after the election.

  • National Cemeteries and Caskets

    I ran across a story today that leaves me with decidedly mixed feelings.

    Here’s a summary: some years ago a World War II veteran – Lawrence Davis, Jr. – died in Florida. He apparently had no family willing to make funeral arrangements for him.

    As a World War II veteran, Davis was authorized to be buried in a National Cemetery. VA regulations and Federal law in effect then and today allowed the VA to bury him. But those same laws and regulations did not allow (or require) the VA to provide him a casket.

    So Davis was buried without a casket. In Florida, that’s apparently still allowed; I don’t know how common that is in other states. He was later honored, per the cemetery’s policy, at a periodic ceremony held to honor veterans who die and are buried with no family present.

    The story has sparked predictable outrage. As the cited article notes, a bill has been introduced in Congress (the Dignified Burial of Veterans Act of 2012) mandating the VA “review its burial standards” and authorizing the VA to purchase caskets (or urns) for all veterans buried in National Cemeteries.

    As I said, I have mixed feelings.

    Obviously, everyone – veterans and non-veterans alike – deserve a dignified burial. But is it really the Federal government’s responsibility to provide a casket for each and every veteran who chooses to be buried in a National Cemetery? And what is inherently disrespectful about burial sans casket?

    I’ve also got serious concerns about how the bill “fixing” this will be implemented and funded if passed. What will the standards be for such government-provided caskets – and what will they cost? (I kinda doubt they’ll end up being the proverbial old-time “pine box.”) And just what else in the VA budget will get cut to free up the funds to buy them? ‘Cause if you think the VA budget will be increased to fund this – well, in that case I happen to have a bridge I’d like to talk to you about selling . . . .

    As a Veteran, my heart tells me the bill proposed to “fix” this is a good thing. But as a believer in limited government – and a fiscal conservative – my head tells me this could be a really bad idea. And it also tells me that maybe we’re trying to “fix” a problem that isn’t really a problem at all.

    What say you all?

  • Phony Halo’s no Helmet

    As if their candidate needed to further alienate the veteran voting bloc, Obama’s clueless handlers have done it again. There were emails circulating on Memorial Day that the presidential security detail had locked down the Vietnam Memorial site early that morning, shooing off veterans and their families so that the locale could be used for a photo op. While I was never able to verify the accuracy of those emails, perhaps this ill-conceived campaign photo posted over at Hot Air where Ed Morrissey has it up as his Obamateurism of the Day, lends them some credence. It no doubt took the president’s photogs some time to set up such an artsy pic with the light just so, so as to provide the requisite halo round the One’s consecrated cranium. Surely the pros and the pols couldn’t be bothered by the plebian presence of actual rank and file Vietnam vets and their families while such an important campaign event was underway.

    Morrissey notes that the White House photo office has the pic on their official website as photo of the day for Memorial Day. It’s #5 of 24 but I couldn’t freeze it for a hyperlink. As a Vietnam vet, I was stunned when I saw this photo. I know these Democrats are clueless when it comes to military sensitivities, but do they not have any idea of the special venerability the Wall possesses for those of us who fought in that war for an unappreciative nation? Or our families and the families of those whose names grace that memorial? I’ve been to all the war memorials on the Mall on multiple occasions and can attest there is always a singular solemnity suffusing that Wall and those standing in its presence. It is the one place in this nation where we who served in that war know that our service has been honored.

    And now these dim-bulb Democrats dishonor our monument by exploiting it for a photo shoot canonizing their candidate on the sacred day set aside to honor those who earned their place on that Wall with their lives? Every name there represents a comrade in arms to me and I assuredly do not appreciate seeing it used for a phony campaign photo by an affirmative action commander-in-chief who never deigned to don the heavy burden of a steel helmet in service to this country. As that picture spreads around the internet, I’m sure there are millions of other veterans who will share my revulsion as well as my determination to see this insensitive fool thrown out of office.

    What do you suppose that Gallup veterans’ poll will look like after this photo gains some fame?

    Crossposted at American Thinker.

  • S&S: VA figures show steep decline in number of homeless veterans

    In this article at Stars & Stripes, titled above, Leo Shane reports that, in this election year when both parties are actively lobbying for the votes of veterans, the VoteVet arm of the government, Veterans’ Affairs Department, unsurprisingly tells us that the number of homeless vets has dropped in the last four years.

    Fewer than 60,000 veterans are now believed to be homeless, Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki said Wednesday, a decline of more than 90,000 from public estimates four years ago.

    But VA officials warn that getting the remaining veterans off the streets — and meeting their goal of ending veterans homelessness by 2015 — may prove even more difficult in the years to come.

    Needless to say, I just don’t believe it. I don’t have any evidence to the contrary, only my own disbelief. I’ll bet that they could take that many homeless vets off of the rolls just by verifying the service of the homeless instead of taking their word at face value. That said, it only takes one real homeless veteran to be a national shame.

    But, I just think it’s funny that they release this news just days after Gallup says veterans are supporting Romney and the only reason they support Romney is because he just hasn’t had a chance to screw over veterans – that time will come, eventually, I’m sure.

  • Metro DC SWAT’s rampage on vet’s home

    Snafudude sends us a link from Emily Miller, my new crush at the Washington Times, who writes about gun issues. She describes the scene at Matthew Corrigan’s apartment in February 2010. We discussed Corrigan here, here and here when he mistakenly called a suicide hotline and got the DC Metro SWAT crowd instead of the help he was seeking. But here’s some of Emily Miller’s report on what we haven’t heard yet;

    “The cops said we needed to leave our house because Matt was going to shoot through the ceiling,” Ms. Sommons [Corrigan’s neighbor] said. “They painted this picture like Rambo was downstairs and ready to blow up the place.”

    Suddenly a police commander jumped in the truck and demanded to know where Sgt. Corrigan put his house key. He refused.

    “I’m not giving you the key. I’m not giving consent to enter my house,” Sgt. Corrigan recalled saying in an interview with me last week at D.C. Superior Court after the city dropped all 10 charges against him.

    “Then the cop said to me, ‘I don’t have time to play this constitutional bullshit with you. We’re going to break your door in, and you’re going to have to pay for a new door.’”

    “‘Looks like I’m buying a new door,’” Sgt. Corrigan responded.

    See, this is what I don’t understand; I know the woman from the hotline made it sound like Corrigan was dangerous and got their adrenaline flowing, but once Corrigan was outside and unarmed, not at all aggressive, what is their justification for treating him like a criminal with no evidence of a crime? I guess more succinctly; who do they think they are?

    Yeah, I almost understand their behavior in the early moments of their raid because they had faulty information, but once he was in custody, why all the angry cop stuff?

    But you should read the whole article and catch the pieces I left out.

  • Obama: Promises to veterans

    Last August, I reported to you from the floor of the American Legion Convention how the President had promised to the assemblage in Minneapolis that he wouldn’t “balance the budget on the backs of veterans”. Within days, we learned that his hitman, Panetta was already at work doing just that. Well, apparently, the president thought that sounded pretty good because he made similar promises yesterday on America’s most sacred grounds;

    “As long as I’m president, we will make sure you and your loved ones will receive the benefits you’ve earned and the respect you deserve,” Obama said. “America will be there for you.”

    Yeah, by forcing us all into the Veterans’ Affairs Department and out of TriCare. I happen to like my doctors at Walter Reed, I like the service I get there and I hate the way I’m treated at the VA. The doctors at Walter Reed kept Strom Thurman alive for a hundred years and as soon as he moved back to South Carolina, he died. So I’m going to resist this big plan of Obama’s to force veterans into the VA government bureaucrat healthcare system run by drama queens and arrogant assholes.

    Added: For additional comedy, he did a guest column in the Stars & Stripes today.

  • Alex Horton: Honoring the Exchange of Life for Life

    Our buddy, Alex Horton, has a new piece up at the New York Times that you should read. It’s about what the folks we offer this single day of national remembrance bought and paid for us;

    Memorial Day for those of us who have fought is not simply a broad recognition of the sacrifices rendered by the dead, but an understanding of the exchange of life for life. Chevy’s gift to us wasn’t so much his skill or his grit. It was an endowment of time, at first measured in the seconds after his Stryker was toppled to its side. He absorbed the beginning of an ambush that could have killed more men. Those seconds he bought us stretched into minutes and hours, transformed into days, weeks. They built years. His gift was a nanosecond exerted under thousands of pounds of pressure that crippled steel and broke his body, but the effects stretch into the infinite

    Make sure you read the whole thing.

  • My Thoughts on Memorial Day

    I wrote a piece for Business Insider which was published today. It’s about the memorial at Camp Pendleton and my visit there in 2007. There is a cross there, along with rocks signifying fallen comrades. I’m not a religious person, and the cross is not the real point of the memorial — at least for me. It is about the dog tags, the rocks, the liquor, and the left mementos.

    At the top of the peak, they dropped their heavy packs. They dug out a small site. In a hole close to the edge, they placed the cross. At the base of the cross, they put down their rocks. Their friends would never be forgotten.

    As combat in Iraq and Afghanistan swelled in the following years, the memorial grew. Marines started bringing new rocks to the memorial. A squad from 1/4 brought up the largest rock at the site for PFC Juan G. Garza. It weighed over fifty pounds. Other Marines brought bottles of liquor, drinking with their fallen brothers and leaving the rest for them at the site. Between rocks, there were dog tags, Purple Hearts, battalion t-shirts, and photos.

    Three of the original seven later died in combat. Their brothers probably carried their rock to the top of the mountain for them.

    It wasn’t constructed by an architect or an artist. The memorial didn’t have tourists coming through it like Arlington Cemetery or the Vietnam Wall. It was a closed site, built and maintained by Marines. Hundreds of rocks had been carried there. Each week, Marines would carry lawn mowers up and groom it.

    After deployments, battalions would go there to honor their fallen warriors.

    Read the whole thing.

    Quite inevitably, there are already comments left from dipshits who take issue with the cross and another who compares our fallen friends to nazis.