The forgotten holiday

It sometimes seems that there are several different classes of holiday. There are the big ones like Christmas and Thanksgiving, when we get time off, spend lots of money and engage in special events and traditional activities. There are the middling ones like Halloween, for which we get no time off, but spend lots of money and engage in traditions like decorating, partying or gift giving, or Labor Day, for which we don’t have many special traditions, but for which we do get time off.

Somewhere at the tail end come the poor cousins like Columbus Day and Veterans Day. Many people don’t get those days off. They aren’t associated with major celebratory events. We don’t decorate for them. Retailers haven’t managed to turn them into big moneymaking affairs. So they come and go without much notice.

And with respect to Veterans Day, that’s a great pity, because right now we need to be reminded of veterans—and actively serving troops—and what we owe them, perhaps more than ever before. We are in the midst of a war that has dragged on almost as long as World War II and, because the army is all-volunteer, it is easy for many people to forget about them. It is one thing to be mindful of the troops’ welfare when the draft could strike any family at any time; it is quite another when a relatively small handful of families are affected.

Just recently the U.S. population pushed past the 300 million mark. The total number of troops that has been deployed in Iraq is about one million. Of those, about 340,000 have been recycled repeatedly through the Middle East battlegrounds. That’s a little over one tenth of one percent of the population taking virtually the full brunt of the Bush administration’s stance that we should “fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them here.”

Whether or not one agrees that the war in Iraq is reducing, rather than enhancing, the threat of terrorism, there should be no disagreement that, with the burden placed disproportionately on so few, those few ought to be given every benefit of our attention and support.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t always seem to be the case. The website of the Iraq and Afghanistan veterans of America (IAVA), iava.org/index.php, provides some interesting information on what, aside from posturing and sound bites, the American Congress has actually been willing to do for the troops. The IAVA provides a list of veteran-related legislation that it has either supported or opposed, lists how various legislators have voted on those bills, and grades them according to those votes. Just over half of our Senators rate in the D or F range, and you’d be surprised at some of their identities—John McCain, a veteran himself and one of the most hawkish of Senators, only rates a D. The House fares much better, but the results from the two houses are still not up to par.

One area in which they appear to have been especially remiss is in providing adequate healthcare for the record numbers of troops that are coming home with severe injuries—including mental problems. Since 2001, Congress has defeated amendments to provide emergency relief for veterans’ healthcare, additional funding for readjustment counseling services, funds for medical facilities and more. For instance, in August of this year it voted down an amendment proposed by Senator Dick Durban of Illinois, that would have provided a measly (by government standards) $2 million for research into the improvement of imaging for traumatic brain injuries suffered—a type of injury referred to in a 2005 Newsweek article as the “key Iraq wound.” The previous year, it defeated another amendment to enhance treatment and services for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)—another major problem, estimated to affect as much as one out of every five soldiers returning home from Iraq.

On Tuesday, the American people made it clear that they want a new direction in this country by turning control of the House, and possibly the Senate (it is not settled as we go to press) to the Democrats. It is to be hoped that the 110th Congress will live up to its obligations to our fighting men and women better than the 109th did. We can do our part by keeping our eyes on the legislation affecting veterans that comes before them, through tools like the IAVA site, and let them know that we’re watching how they vote.

Dr. Punnybone

The Home Front