WAKE UP! THE DAY OF THE 'CRAZY VET' IS OVER

 PHONY "ATTACK DOG" VET GROUPS MAKE FOOLS OF US ALL

By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER

With so many critical issues coming to a head involving the VA and veterans rights, veterans health issues and keeping up support for our troops, the constant acrimony between mainstream veterans groups, progressive groups, peace groups and "political action" groups, all claiming to speak for veterans has been highly destructive.

Talking in terms from the Tom Wolfe book on Ken Kesey, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, if you can’t get with the program, "GET OFF THE BUS!!"

Year after year we have backlogs of claims, nightmarish tales of patient abuse and now, vets being driven to suicide by threats of prosecution.  We have even uncovered a VA version of the old Nixon "Whitehouse plumbers" spying on VA patients. 

The group I want to talk to today is Gathering of Eagles.  We have tried to get them to join us in California, working with the American Legion and Military Order of the Purple Heart.  Thus far, they are standing aside.  But…

Going to their website and looking at their history, they are a "political action group" tied to the Republican Party.  This, in itself, is not a disaster.  If they can influence Republican politicians like John McCain to start supporting veterans, it would be a godsend.

One of the things I love most about them is their announcement that VETS FOR PEACE, a group of hybrid car driving recycling nuts was planning on blowing up the Vietnam wall.  "GOE" organized a group of amused but delusional fringe people to put on one of the funniest shows since Al Franken started working for the USO.  This is a real group of jokers here.

They got people’s attention but spent that bashing other vets and supporting an agenda that had absolutely nothing to do with Veterans issues.

Worst part of that is that alot of great vets (and a pack we aren’t so sure about) belong to Gathering of Eagles.  They would be good people to have, standing tall and not crawling in the gutter spewing "trashtalk."

Check their website.  If you aren’t with them, then you must be a phony vet.  If you are a real vet, then you must not have been "deployed."  If you were deployed and in combat and still aren’t with them, then you are probably a terrorist or communist sympathizer.

Are people really that nuts?  No, not really.  This crap is written by public relations weenies in DC who think all veterans are total idiots.  Some real veterans are idiots and all phony veterans are.  

The end result of this kind of recruiting will guarantee a lots of phony vets trying to get in.  Did they succeed?  I don’t know, but any group that points fingers at others brings a question or two to mind.

Why does any of this matter?  We have a new president in office and were promised the moon.  What we are getting is moon pie, hold the pie.  We blame Bush "neocon" holdovers for everything but 6 months into a new presidency, I would like to see management reform and not Congressonal hearings.

Fix the problem, not the blame.

Banging a drum, calling the VA names, accusing other vets of being "communists" or braying at the moon won’t accomplish any more than the tired out mainstream veterans groups that stand by accepting disaster and looking the other way.

Passion in them has died.  They drowned in hopelessness long ago and became part of the problem.   This is simple human nature.

The same thing will happen to us.  We will become old, our teeth will fall out and we will push for flag protection amendments while another generation of our troops are coming home to…..

Gordon Duff is a Marine combat veteran and regular contributor on political and social issues.