Daily Times

While the American political establishment has long commemorated and upheld the services of its armed forces, it has often failed to serve the imminent needs of its veterans at home. It was recently reported that over 300,000 veterans died while waiting for medical benefits. With the War on Terror now in its 15th year, the issues plaguing veterans have yet to be dealt with in any meaningful fashion. Talks of future deployment of troops in Iraq and warmongering amongst prominently right wing circles on Iran would be better informed if Washington politicos were to comprehend the unbearable agony that the present lot of veterans continue to face.

Lost at home: Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) remains a chief predicament for veterans after serving tours abroad. PTSD involves experiencing a previous trauma event that often leads to nervousness, nightmares and mood changes. It is estimated that nearly 11-20 percent of veterans who served in the Operation Iraqi Freedom or Enduring Freedom suffer a case of PTSD in a year. One serious outcome of being diagnosed with PTSD is drug abuse. Many veterans have narrated how alcohol was sometimes the only escape from the daily misery of being paralyzed with PTSD. Those with PTSD are often at higher risk for alcohol abuse than the normal population with a similar background.

Former Iraq veteran Matthew Hoh recounts his experience coming home after his second deployment in 2007 and how his alcoholism nearly killed him. “There was this black wave that came over me. And at the darkest of times, I was always a big drinker anyway, but not in this sense. And it soon became where the only way I could survive, where the only way I could numb myself, the only medication that would make me be okay was by drinking.” Hoh writes: “I began trying to drink myself to death. Thoughts of suicide became common until they were a near daily presence by 2011.”

In a 2014 report titled “No Time to Waste: Evidence-Based Treatment for Drug Dependence at the United States Department of Veterans Affairs” Human Rights Watch asserted that alcohol and drug abuse is intimately intertwined with other detrimental issues such as homelessness. While most homeless veterans feature from the Vietnam War, Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans are becoming homeless at a greater rate, the HRW report asserted. Female veterans are more likely than their male counterparts to be living on the streets as they not only face the crippling challenges of PTSD but Military Sexual Trauma (MST), brought on by incidents of sexual attack within the military.

Government’s shortcomings: As problems for Iraq war veterans continue to be dire, the political establishment’s overtures or lack of has not helped. In March 2013, the backlog for processing disability compensation claims, defined as any claims taking longer than 125 days to process, stood at a staggering 600,000. Since then Veteran Affairs department has steadily reduced the number of backlog claims to just over 200,000 today. Many still remain sceptical, however, of the VA’s ability to eliminate the entire backlog by 2015.

Last year, the Veterans Affairs (VA) department was embroiled in an embarrassing scandal trying to cover up the backlog that has beleaguered the VA department for years. An independent report conducted by the VA’s inspector general revealed that VA clinics around the country were falsifying waiting times required for veterans to receive care. For example in Phoenix, a VA hospital was accused of deliberately keeping out veterans of the electronic waiting lists, after which an appointment can be scheduled. It was found that 1,700 new patients were not placed on waiting lists when they first enrolled for a primary care appointment and until then their waiting times could not be determined. “These veterans were and continue to be at risk of being forgotten or lost in Phoenix HCS’s convoluted scheduling process,” asserted the report. A mix of poor planning and an incompetent bureaucracy has only added to resentment of former soldiers.

Another report about a VA clinic in Dayton, Ohio revealed lack of concern in tackling VA backlogs. The report asserted that there were over 1,000 patient appointments on the backlog. “I never used to understand why the Vietnam guys were so bitter,” said former Iraq War veteran, Ari Sonnenberg, who has been at the receiving end of the VA’s backlog crisis. “We’re very quick to send people to war, but we’re super slow taking care of those people that actually make that sacrifice.” Sonnneberg now wonders if all the agony was worth it. “I am looking for people to ask questions. Was this war worth the aftermath, the millions of veterans, this generation’s Vietnam?” he ponders. “For me, my friends, it wasn’t. Not at all.”

Future deployments: Ever since the invasion, Iraq has been in perpetual turmoil. The rise of groups such as the Islamic State (ISIS) is now considered the face of American failure in Iraq. Nevertheless, the drums of war cease to beat. For many veterans, the airstrikes against ISIS bring out mixed emotions. President hopefuls Jeb Bush and Donald Trump have suggested they would send more troops into Iraq to defeat Daesh. While many support President Obama’s policy towards ISIS, some veterans are raising concerns over possible future deployments of troops. “There’s a faction that thinks, ‘We have to do something’,” claims Yinon Weiss, founder of Rally Point, an online social network group for former U.S. veterans. “But some say we’ve spilled enough blood. Iraq has had our support for almost a decade. At what point do we stop putting Americans in harm’s way?”

Considering that over 5,000 U.S. soldiers were killed, and hundreds of thousands injured, the fears these veterans have are worth noting. Over 160 billion dollars of taxpayer money has been spent on veterans of the post 9/11 era, with that amount likely to reach a trillion over the next 30-40 years. Much work has to be done to rehabilitate those who are struggling to recover from a war whose purpose they have a hard time defining. Hence it would be a grave mistake to undertake further military expeditions that have often led to no real credible results.

“That lack of clarity is something that weighs heavily on our community”, Paul Rieckhoff of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America aptly puts it. “And you can’t honestly tell us we’re going to get taken care of when we get home. That promise has been shattered.”

The writer is a freelance columnist. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, Al-Jazeera America, and Religion News Service