Government’s Endless War Against Vietnam Veterans

By Robert L. Rosebrock

In 1975, the fall of Saigon brought an end to the Vietnam War in Southeast Asia while our U.S. government generously welcomed more than 50,000 Vietnamese Refugees onto American soil in Southern California by sheltering, clothing and feeding them.

To prepare for them, an estimated 900 Marines and civilians had worked six days erecting more than 1,000 tents and Quonset huts at Camp Pendleton Marine Base that would provide the anxious Refugees with safe care and a hopeful future.

Most all of the Refugees arrived with no money or personal possessions and very few spoke any English. Nonetheless, they were compassionately accepted and sponsored by volunteer families, churches and corporations, eventually assimilating into our society. The vast majority became productive U.S. citizens

In addition to this gesture of goodwill, our government also provides shelter, beds, meals, TV, recreation and healthcare for hardened criminals in our local, state and federal prisons, and it offers the same safe and comfortable living conditions for violent thug terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

On the other hand, disabled and homeless Veterans who selflessly defended our nation have been forgotten and dispossessed by the same government and forced to live alone, homeless and hungry in back-alley squalor.

By the VA’s own admission, 47% of today’s homeless Veterans are from the Vietnam War era. Most of them are now in their 60’s and 70’s and many are in frail and declining health.

Incredulously, while the Vietnamese Refugees were welcomed into our country, America’s Veterans who had fought to defend them in their native homeland were insulted, demeaned and ostracized when they returned home to their own native country.

The fact that Vietnamese Refugees were given immediate attention and support decades ago while tens of thousands of our Vietnam War Veterans are still homeless and destitute is a national disgrace beyond comprehension.

As a supposedly moral and compassionate society, how can we allow the exclusively deeded property at the Los Angeles National Veterans Home to be leased for a public dog park, public community park, public golf course, public parking lots, used car storage, private school grounds, carnivals, entertainment, etc., while 20,000 disabled and disadvantaged Veterans are homeless and fending for their lives on the dangerous streets of Los Angeles?

The answer is simple. We can’t!

On May 28, 2012 during the Memorial Day ceremony at the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C., President Obama proclaimed:

“One of the most painful chapters in our history was Vietnam — most particularly, how we treated our troops who served there. You were often blamed for a war you didn’t start, when you should have been commended for serving your country with valor. You were sometimes blamed for misdeeds of a few, when the honorable service of the many should have been praised. You came home and sometimes were denigrated, when you should have been celebrated. It was a national shame, a disgrace that should have never happened. And that’s why here today we resolve that it will not happen again.

After years of battling the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) over the misuse of Veterans land and the abuse of disabled and homeless Veterans in Los Angeles, fellow Veterans believed that President Obama’s appointment of General Eric K. Shinseki (a disabled Vietnam War Veteran) as Secretary of the VA would bring about a new change of working for Veterans instead of working against them. Unfortunately, some things never change.

President Obama (not a Veteran) has failed to deliver on repeated promises that his Administration would faithfully honor a sacred trust to care for our disabled and homeless Veterans, and Secretary Shinseki has likewise failed in his entrusted duty to deliver on the President’s promises.

In fact, the ACLU filed a lawsuit against Secretary Shinseki and his executive director at the Los Angeles VA, Donna Beiter (not a Veteran), for misusing Veterans property and the mistreatment of disabled and homeless Veterans.

One of the major Plaintiffs in the 97-page lawsuit is Vietnam Veterans of America, which is chartered by the United States Congress.

Correspondingly, Veterans believed President Obama would honor his Memorial Day promise to end the shameful mistreatment of Vietnam Veterans by proffering to settle the lawsuit, since nearly half of today’s homeless Veterans are from the Vietnam War era.

To the contrary, President Obama is treating Vietnam War Veterans with appalling disrespect and dishonor as Attorney General Eric Holder (not a Veteran) and his U.S. Attorneys are waging serious war against their last hope for respect and justice.

Veterans held faith that the ACLU lawsuit would bring long-sought justice against the VA, particularly during a Court Hearing on September 8, 2011 when U.S. District Judge S. James Otero called for settlement discussions and chastised U.S. Attorneys: “I’m not going to let the federal government hide behind bureaucracy.”

For a fleeting moment, Veterans believed that justice was on their side. But instead of honoring his word and ruling with a heavy hand on behalf of Veterans, Judge Otero (not a Veteran) surrendered to the heavy hand of the Obama Administration’s Department of Justice by dismissing major claims in the lawsuit as he hid behind nebulous loopholes instead of ruling up front with moral and honorable discretion.

By bowing to the Obama defense team instead of standing up and defending the men and women who courageously pledged their lives to defend our nation, Judge Otero cowardly betrayed our disabled, disadvantaged and homeless Veterans who desperately need housing and care.

The equally shameful betrayal by the U.S. Departments of Justice and Veterans Affairs fighting against disabled and impoverished Veterans is embarrassingly disgraceful and manifestly un-American.

It’s long been held that anyone who betrays our nation, which is heroically defended by our military, commits one of the most abhorrent of all crimes.

So, what would be the most abhorrent of all crimes if it isn’t betraying the very men and women who have defended America, particularly those who became disabled and disadvantaged from their war injuries?

The very people who should be coming to the defense of our Veterans, our U.S. government employees, are the very ones who continue to fight and betray our Veterans.

The defendants in the ACLU lawsuit are government employees in the Department of Veterans Affairs. The U.S. Attorneys who are defending them are government employees in the Department of Justice. And the U.S. District Judge who is presiding over the lawsuit is a government employee in the Department of Justice.

All of these public servants are fighting against the most vulnerable in our society, disabled and disadvantaged Veterans who are homeless, elderly, and in failing health.

Can there be a bigger bully or traitor than the employees of the U.S. government?

Think about it; the Vietnam War ended 37 years ago yet the U.S. government continues to wage an endless war against the military Veterans of that War instead of defending them.

It’s indisupted that “war is hell.” Whether America’s military men and women are fighting a war or trying to heal from fighting a war, it’s always hell because the war never ends.

When our military Troops go to war, they serve under the Department of Defense as highly trained professional warriors who are equipped with the finest defense weapons in the world to defeat the toughest enemies in the world.

After returning from oversea war zones, they are supposed to be served by the Department of Veterans Affairs with the finest healthcare facilities in the world. But instead of healing from war, America’s military Veterans are fighting some of life’s toughest battles, day-by-day, just to survive in the country they defended.

Unfortunately, these battles are not fought as a collective and supportive military unit, but as one lonely Veteran against the bullying bureaucrats of the VA, one of the largest bureaucracies in federal government.

To make matters worse, Veterans are not trained to fight personal “David vs. Goliath” wars with our own government, and they have no protective force or weapons of defense in these endless and tiring battles.

As time goes on, their warrior and survivor skills diminish and their sense of victory becomes hopeless while their opponent keeps getting bigger and more powerful.

Most would be far safer fighting in a foreign war zone with their military unit than they are trying to survive alone fighting the domestic enemy of government bureaucracy.

Tragically, every year more than 6,500 Veterans voluntarily surrender their lives … victims of bureaucratic battle fatigue.

Their solace is found in Plato’s prophetic claim more than 2,500 years ago: “Only the dead have seen the end of war.”

It is estimated that since the Vietnam War ended, more Vietnam Veterans have committed suicide than the 58,272 who were killed during the War.

The death toll amongst homeless Vietnam Veterans will continue to climb as more commit suicide, overdose on VA drugs, are murdered, or die of hardship and old age while fighting against the domestic enemy.

With nearly half of all homeless Veterans of the Vietnam era, eventually Iraqi and Afghanistan Veterans will impact the number of homeless Veterans and we will not allow the U.S. government to wage war against them.

The Civil War between the U.S. government and Vietnam War Veterans is the longest in American history and it must cease, posthaste.

The government of the United States must lay down its defiant weapons of disrespect, apathy, neglect, abuse, revenge and hostility toward Vietnam War Veterans.

If the U.S. government could provide emergency shelter and care for 50,000 Vietnam Refugees nearly four decades ago and help them to become productive participants in society, then surely we can do the same today for 20,000 of our disadvantaged Veterans in Los Angeles who have been exiled from their rightful and legal Home by the same government,

On behalf of all disabled and homeless Veterans, particularly our Vietnam War Veterans in the Los Angeles area, this is to respectfully charge the President of the United States and members of Congress to accept full responsibility and honor the promise in the Deed of 1888 that was made on behalf of our Veterans, just as our Veterans have honored their promise on behalf of America.

It’s time for our government to show the same benevolence to our Vietnam War Veterans as it did when welcoming Vietnam Refugees by immediately bringing our homeless Veterans “Home” so they can safely and peacefully heal from the war injuries they have suffered for decades.

The Old Veterans Guard of the Veterans Revolution offers essential settlement conditions regarding a plethora of longstanding grievances against the U.S. government that will finally bring resolve to the decades-long misuse and misappropriation of the sacred land at the Los Angeles National Veterans Home and end the abuse and maltreatment of disabled, disadvantaged and homeless Veterans.

National Veterans Home Treaty

• The President of the United States and members of Congress agree to unconditionally accept the moral and legal responsibility of enforcing the Congressional Act of 1887 and legal Deed of 1888, and permanently maintain the Los Angeles National Home for disabled, disadvantaged and homeless Veterans.

• The President of the United States and members of Congress agree to direct the Department of Veterans Affairs to immediately construct emergency shelter and care for all homeless Veterans on the sacred property that was exclusively deeded in their behalf nearly 125 years ago.

• The President of the United States and members of Congress agree to take control of the Cal-Vet Home on federal property that has over 300 vacant rooms and make them immediately available for homeless Veterans.

• The President of the United States and members of Congress agree to immediately evict all occupants in violation of the Congressional Act of 1887 and the legal Deed of 1888, including those in violation of government’s Administrative Procedure Act, and to follow through with uncompromised investigations and prosecutions against all who engaged in the biggest land-fraud scam in American history and committed some of the most heinous crimes against humanity on American soil.

• The President of the United States and members of Congress agree to rescind any authority whatsoever granted to the Department of Interior on Veterans property, including the oil well.

• The President of the United States and members of Congress agree to mandate a minimum of $2.5 billion to restore these sacred grounds that have become a national disgrace and transform this into a place of honor, dignity and respect for our war injured and needy Veterans and begin the immediate construction of a new and modern National Home that shall be permanently maintained for America’s disabled, disadvantaged and homeless Veterans.

This is a call for responsible and patriotic action. Each individual candidate who is running for President of the United States, U.S. Congress and the U.S. Senate, is respectfully requested to endorse this “National Veterans Home Treaty” and unconditionally pledge to bring an end to government’s decades-long war that’s been shamefully waged against Vietnam Veterans, and to establish new National Veterans Homes all across America for current and future generations of Veterans. Thank you for your support!

God Bless America and the Veterans Revolution!

Robert Rosebrock

U.S. Army, 1965-67, Schofield Barracks, Hqs., U.S Army, Hawaii. Director, The Veterans Revolution, Captain, the Old Veterans Guard, and Director, We the Veterans.