DOZENS OF GROUPS AND DECADES OF FIXING
EVERYTHING IS FIXED EXCEPT VETERANS PROBLEMS
By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER
We get a ton of email and phone calls, from individual veterans to heads of every group. The veterans and their families are always overwhelmed, their lives being destroyed and everyone has let them down. Sometime we help. Sometimes we have no place to refer people. People know we care and have picked up the idea that we are humans like them.
Journalists, activists or "organization" people aren’t supposed to be human. They are supposed to be dull witted, greedy and narcissistic. Prettymuch everyone knows this. People are why most of us have pets.
The easy targets, of course, are the Legion and VFW. They are huge, powerful and have money to burn. They are also all bureaucracy. Long ago, the Legion was an anti-war group, pushing America into isolationism. That was the times then. Even Reagan was a Communist then. Everyone was something, it was the depression. We lived in a world of "ism’s."
Problem is, every organization that starts out saying they are different, only wants to be the same. Very few people are willing to take a stand unless they get something for it. Nobody wants to stand and fight when it is easier to follow along, fit in and learn to look the other way.
This is why the right hates the left. One blowhard recognizes another pretty quickly.
With all this organizing, whining, finger pointing and time wasting, we are still leaving huge holes that veterans and their families fall into.
Being "journalists" or "bloggers" or whatever we are here, we can rant about the VA, howl at the moon or plot like Trotskyites. I like to think that we push people to examine things and, sometimes, entertain.
My good friend, Gene Simes at Operation Fire For Effect is one of the few purists. We scream at each other on the phone, and do so together on the radio. Gene is fearless and pragmatic. He can burn down and he can build.
Gene, and a group of others around here are some of the few who give and ask nothing in return. Though many of us see each other as opposites, every Legion and VFW or Amvets post has volunteers who give and expect nothing.
At heart, we are all the same people, doing the same thing. We just can’t talk to each other in a world where screaming has long replaced dialog.
What organization leaders, journalists and the people who really care in government, many sitting in county veterans offices, VA clinics and the small but brave percentage who survive the meat grinder of back stabbing in Washingon all know is that what matters is the next phone call, the next person to ask for help, come up to your desk or sit out there in the waiting room.
If we are fighting an enemy, its complacency, the ability to forget, to turn away, to stop caring because caring is just too hard. Helping people who need help can only go so far by tearing down the mechanism of abuse and ignorance that has vicitimized veterans for so long.
Building and supporting have to be the key to any solution. With so many thousands out there in hundreds of groups, all who care so much, why are we so slow in setting an agenda we can agree on, one that solves problems, puts a sword to the neck of the evildoers (you know who you are) and helps us stand together?
Going after the VA on a professional basis, full time, is unfair. Last week I was taken on a tour of our new Vet Center here in Toledo. The manager is an army vet and everyone there does everything they can for every vet that comes in the door. The clinic around the corner has good employees working in a medical bureaucracy that too often prevents competent care, I have seen that first hand, but nobody bad is there.
When people who care, people who need jobs and people with their own lives are thrown into a bureaucracy with a history of schizophrenic oversight by political appointees, Congressional committees and service organizations that have trouble managing a pancake breakfast, much less the largest medical and social record tracking system in the world, expect problems.
If the VA were an army, it could only defeat itself.
The VA competes with private medical services that have gone thru decades of massive cost increases that, as much as rising oil prices and our endless wars, have bankrupted America.
Sometimes I think VA management sees themselves as a cross between the two worst managed groups in America, the corrupt Pentagon procurement section, people who are allowed to take gifts from vendors for years then turn around and work for them, and the medical establishment that makes the $600 toilet seat seem like a bargain.
Our problem, of course, is that we have created this corrupt bureaucracy and a splintered group of advisory and oversight groups, mostly with political agendas that, decades ago, lost their fire and honesty, yet set the agenda, set the bar, and set it low.
This week I spent some time exchanging ideas with the Blue Water Navy group along with our transport pilots from Desert Storm. Both groups include the best and brightest. Both groups have well known health issues, really health disasters and have been in and out of court, in and out of Congress and in and out of the VA bureaucracy and the history of pseudo-science denialism that allows vets to die, decade after decade of radiation, chemcial poisoning and irresponsible medical procedures.
Watching coverup after coverup, lie after lie, from scientists, doctors, administrators, all paid to help but spending their lives and our money doing little but destroying the people who defend us and them, embitters anyone who cares.
We are all supposed to either take a "payoff" to join "the system" or give up. This is how it usually ends up.
The Congressional hearings come and go. This week it will be filthy equipment giving AIDS and Hepatitis to vets. Next week it will be insecticides or vaccinations that have killed off thousands more. We are still dealing with chemical defoliants that were manufactured more as chemical warfare agents than anything else, and, of course, used on our own men and women.
While this goes on, claims are still heading down a rabbit hole, appeals at the VA are out of control and more and more vets are moving into the criminal and civil justice systems tied to substance abuse, divorces, child support issues, foreclosures and simply running out of money.
I read somewhere recently that Veterans are the new hated minority. New?
Gordon Duff is a Marine combat veteran and regular contributor on political and social issues.
Gordon Duff posted articles on VT from 2008 to 2022. He is a Marine combat veteran of the Vietnam War. A disabled veteran, he worked on veterans and POW issues for decades.
Gordon is an accredited diplomat and is generally accepted as one of the top global intelligence specialists. He manages the world’s largest private intelligence organization and regularly consults with governments challenged by security issues.
Duff has traveled extensively, is published around the world, and is a regular guest on TV and radio in more than “several” countries. He is also a trained chef, wine enthusiast, avid motorcyclist, and gunsmith specializing in historical weapons and restoration. Business experience and interests are in energy and defense technology.
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