It's Time To Start Treating Our Veterans Right

   If I'm walking down the street and witness four or five younger guys harassing and being physical with an elderly lady or man, I know that I would intervene and somehow get them to stop their atrocious behavior. If I saw a man beating a woman I again would attempt to prevent it from continuing. If a child was being mauled by two or three dogs I wouldn't hesitate to rescue that child.

   These three scenarios I've just listed have a common theme, in all of them my intervention has the very likely possibility that even if I were to be successful in halting the violence being dispensed, that I would soon discover that the violence hadn't stopped, it just changed it's focus point to me instead. Nobody wants to be put into a situation like that, where you know it's your moral duty to help the victim involved at the same time you're realizing that you could be the next victim yourself.

   That is called putting yourself in harms way. If you happen to be the victim being rescued then whoever that person doing the rescuing is in your eyes a true hero and surely has your eternal gratitude and good wishes. There is no real difference between what I have just described and that which the men and women of our military do every day.

   These soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines put themselves in harms way for us every time we ask them to. They intercede on our behalf to face and combat the forces that wish us and our nation harm. These brave people are no less heroic than the ones who personally rescue you. With the war in Iraq declared ended and the war in Afghanistan winding down we are beginning to have large numbers of military personnel returning home, some of these heroes have suffered terrible physical damage and should be treated to only the best medical care that can be found.

   But there remains many, many more that are suffering wounds that aren't visible to the naked eye, they are being tortured by the things they have witnessed, and the things one needs to do in war. Things that we cannot bear to think about are the things these people live with in their memories every single day.

    When I watched the tragedy of the Sandy Hook shootings unfold on the news all I could do was cry. Every time I saw anything about that horrible event my heart would break and my tears would flow. To this day it causes me pain to just think of the suffering being endured by the loved ones of those young victims.

    How much more so for those on the front lines in war, the slaughter of thousands of innocents who were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. The enemy our troops fought were very willing to kill and maim their own people for any opportunity with which to also kill Americans.

   Would you want to see the results of a car bomb going off in a busy market place? Seeing arms, legs, and heads lying around you that only moments earlier had been attached to women, children, and babies. God forbid us from ever having to view that scene, and yet, that is what many of our returning military were subjected to all the time. These things have a mental effect on anybody and they do take their toll in time.


   You aren't going to hear anyone saying that they're having problems because they witnessed a bus load of people getting ripped apart by an I.E.D., or that they can't shake the guilt of having to shoot a 9 year old suicide bomber running toward them.They don't talk about these things, they keep them inside because they know how horrible they sound.

    We as a nation have an obligation to these heroes that have gone into harms way on our behalf, we owe them a debt of gratitude so large that it is unlikely we could ever fulfill it. But instead of coming home and finding themselves the recipients of all that a grateful country can give, the only things they experience are the chaotic mismanagement of disability claims, the chronic unemployment problem, and the slashing of funding for veterans programs.

    Shame on us! Shame on us all! Our countries leaders who seemed to have no problems with sending these people into harms way now seem to have trouble delivering what was promised to these brave Americans.

   It would appear as though the Congressmen and Senators of the United States of America feel that their priorities are best suited in the continued squabbling and bickering being performed for the last four years instead of doing the job we sent them to do, looking out for the welfare of the American public. This bullshit has to stop, it's bad enough that we civilians have to endure the repercussions of our legislators partisanship nightmare, but subjecting our returning veterans to it's collateral fallout is an outrage that none of us should tolerate.

    Whether you are Republican, Democrat, or Independent makes absolutely no difference, we are all Americans and as such it is our duty to insure that we do right by our military vets. Giving anything less than the very best possible to these people is unacceptable and we need to tell those representing us in Washington that if they are incapable of doing so, then we will gladly replace them.

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