Our veterans deserve more than just a ‘thank you’
The public sometimes gets a couple of observances confused — Memorial Day, that was observed May 30 — and Veterans Day that we celebrate today. There is an easy way to distinguish between the two holidays. Memorial Day is in honor of those who made the ultimate sacrifice in service to our country. Veterans Day is for those living veterans of our military services.
Today is the day we celebrate all who are wearing or who have worn the uniforms of all branches of the military. While our military has been all volunteer since July 1973 that does not mean that serving our country has gotten any easier. As with everything, it has become more complicated. And today’s vets meet a plethora of problems while serving and after their discharge.
According to the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans, there are “39,471 veterans that are homeless on any given night.” Another 140,000 are incarcerated in state and federal prisons. Fortunately, divorce rates that had risen during the height of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have leveled off, still, many of our vets are still suffering in family terms from the many deployments of that era.
What are today’s vets facing?
Fewer young people meet the qualifications to enter the military. Back in the 1970s when Richard Nixon was president, more than 70 percent of Congress had served in the military. Today, that has dropped to 20 percent. And with an all-volunteer force, there is a sense that most American families have no “skin in the game” when it comes to the wars we fight and the numerous deployments our men and women in uniform have to suffer through.
And there are serious issues facing veterans from their health care to divorce to suicide. The most serious is suicide. The Army’s suicide rate had been on the increase, according to Military Times, since 2001. The Army had a suicide rate of 30 per 100,000 soldiers compared to the general public’s 12.5 per 100,000 for 2012. In 2015 there were 265 active duty suicides in the Army. We are all to familiar with the state of health care for veterans. The system is broken and vets are still getting caught up in a bureaucratic maze that leaves them waiting for care.
In some areas there are bright spots for veterans. One is Veterans Treatment Courts. It’s a special court designed for veterans to get them the help they need. Many times they are homeless, jobless and addicted. Sometimes their addictions are tied to their military service, sometimes not.
Veterans are admitted to the programs after being referred by prosecutors, defense lawyers, even family members and usually stay in the program 12 to 18 months. The program was started in 2008 and has spread to all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Guam, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. In Georgia there are several such courts. The first in the state was in Forsyth and since 2013 there has been a veterans court in Bibb County. Veterans allowed in the program submit to random drug screenings, attend regular check-in sessions with Superior Court Judge Tripp Self (another judge will take over Self’s responsibilities now that he has been appointed to the Court of Appeals) and their progress monitored by court personnel and social service agencies. And there are some inpatient options available. When they successfully complete the program any charges they faced are wiped clean and they can get on with their lives.
Here’s the bottom line: Our veterans have been willing to put their lives on the line for the people of this country. We should be ashamed as a nation to say we have one veteran who has to struggle with our health system; one veteran who is homeless; one veteran who gets a letter saying he or she has to pay back an enlistment bonus for signing up again when the country needed them to fight in some God-forsaken land thousands of miles from home.
Still, they do it. They get the job done for us when we won’t get the job done for them. Our veterans are an amazing group of people and on this one day we are here to say, “thank you.” But that’s not enough. We should know how woefully inadequate this gesture is and make a promise to put pressure on our elected leadership to do better when it comes to our veterans.
To put it another way, we must demand they do better or threaten to vote them out of office and fulfill that pledge if they don’t listen. Once word has spread that the American people mean business when it comes to supporting our veterans, you’ll see a higher priority given to veteran concerns.
This story was originally published November 10, 2016 at 9:00 PM with the headline "Our veterans deserve more than just a ‘thank you’."