Suffer the Little Children

We've known this for decades but it takes on a new meaning in the era of the forever war.

Fun & Giggles with an M-240B

Since dad and mom go away for months on end with multiple deployments, I guess it makes sense to explain why those dads and moms are away and what they do while away.  Still, nothing says family values than a five year-old with an M-240B. 

The kids get the whiz-bang of military hardware and the rest of us get the normalization of war.

A side note:  The Olympian ran the story with the photo in its dead tree version but the photo is nowhere to be found on The Olympian's website.  Hence the scanned version. 

It's disturbing enough.  Maybe that's why the photo is so scarce.

The Cost of Doing Business

Military training chant: 

"War is our business and business is good!"

But not so good if you or a loved one is an input:  military families speak out about post deployment suicide. 

When the War Comes Home

Timely piece in the Washington Post today about the widow and family of a Marine Corps major who committed suicide after two tours in Iraq. The veterans benefit system does not fully accept suicide as a "legitimate" casualty so claiming benefits after a suicide is difficult and exhausting. I've met two widows of suicides in my veterans advocacy work. Neither has been awarded benefits. Both have had trouble even getting information. I can give them some information but I've always thought that they need a full-time lawyer to really pursue their claim.

Turns out, even that doesn't work.

Almost two years later, the high-level intercession by the Marine commandant and the Washington lawyer has produced little from the federal government for Hackett’s widow. The inability of Dowd to wrest any money from the Department of Veterans Affairs shows the limits of what the federal government can do for families of service members who kill themselves as a result of mental trauma caused by war.

Dowd and a team of nine lawyers have fought unsuccessfully for the last 18 months to convince the VA and Prudential Financial Inc., which administers a life insurance program for veterans, to pay a $400,000 claim to Danelle Hackett. The life insurance premiums were automatically deducted from Hackett’s paycheck for 26 years when he was on active duty.

If Hackett had been killed in battle or committed suicide before he retired in 2008, his wife would have received the $400,000 from the policy. But Hackett left the military and, amid mounting personal crises, let the policy lapse.

[...]

After reviewing the evidence collected by Dowd and his team, the VA ruled that Hackett’s death was caused by the “chronic and severe” PTSD he developed in Iraq. The finding meant that his wife would no longer have to pay taxes on his $1,755-a-month pension. The change resulted in an extra $100 a month in income, Danelle said.

Last month, Dowd urged the VA to retroactively find Hackett “totally disabled” and incapable of “substantially gainful employment,” a designation that would have allowed his widow to collect on the $400,000 life insurance policy.

The VA rejected the request, citing Hackett’s job at the refinery. “I know [the job] was less than he was trained for as an officer,” a VA official said. “But it is not about the quality of the job or the wage he earned. . . . There is no wiggle room there.”

Robert M. Bilder, the chief of medical psychology and neuropsychology at UCLA’s medical school said the VA did not grasp the depths of Hackett’s helplessness. Bilder, who has advised the Marine Corps on mental health issues, reviewed Hackett’s file on a pro-bono basis for Dowd.

“While I have seen my share of what I believe are inappropriate judgments by insurers, I believe this is the greatest travesty I have personally witnessed in my 25 years of clinical practice,” he wrote.

Stories like these make me want to puke. I recall all the lies that created these wars and all the promises to "support the troops." And then I see this shit.

These families pay the ultimate costs of war while its architects live out their lives in ease and wealth. What's not to puke about?


postscript

Dowd is John Dowd, one of the biggest names in Washington, DC legal circles, one of the heaviest of heavy hitters.

A Family Affair

My cousin graduated from the Seattle University this weekend, completing a masters degree in nursing. I attended her graduation party after through a mostly chance encounter with her aunt, also a cousin, that resulted from a weekend bicycle ride with my brother, Neil, and about 3,000 others in Redmond, Washington. All of which was within about 75 miles of here. For the record, my brother rode the century (100 miles) route on a fixed gear road bicycle, probably the only rider who did so. I rode 25 miles on an 18 speed mountain bike, quite enough for one day and my first ever organized ride with lots of other people.

Meeting my cousin, her friends and other family members was fun. Lots of grandkids and other young children were about. The graduate was one of my cousin Pat’s three daughters and a son, born mid to late 60’s. Among the other guests were father, grandparents, fellow graduates and a member of the Washington National Guard 81st Brigade, on orders to deploy in Iraq for his second tour. He said he was infantry, a reality that always gives me a start. Someone asked “what is infantry?” another startling thought. His answer was “we chase the bad guys”. I wanted to ask how he would know the bad guys but did not want to use this occasion to initiate a serious discussion of the psychological and moral issues involved in “chasing the bad guys”, which I understand involves exercising brute and lethal force against other human beings. (I would very much like to have that discussion with an active duty combat soldier who has deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan previously and now faces a second or third tour.)

Instead, I offered the classic infantry mantra of “stay low” and my own “Godspeed”. On the drive home, I realized how lame “stay low” is as a strategy when you travel in large, mechanized fighting vehicles or charge into someone’s home at night. I also came up with a better definition of the infantry mission:

to close with and destroy a designated target using a combination of maneuver, and lethal force delivered by individual and crew-served weapons.

Of course, infantry soldiers do not designate targets; they capture, repulse, destroy or otherwise neutralize those targets. That’s their job. Someone higher up—“above my pay grade”—designates targets. That “someone” is the chain of command and is fully responsible for all the violence inflicted by soldiers under their direction—all the way to the very top. (I’m talking to you, Dick Cheney. And you’re little sidekick, too.)

The soldier is also responsible for that violence, if only to answer to himself or herself (yes, some women do pull the trigger on a human target). Given the nature of America’s volunteer military and swelling patriotism after 9-11, I can understand why soldiers were reluctant to even think about questioning the wisdom of their missions. Maybe that’s the difference between me and these soldiers; I don’t think sacrifice for one’s country should be unlimited. The nation must offer a valid reason for that sacrifice; soldiers and their families have every right to ask why?.

The young soldier I met also said something very true. I listened in as he told my cousin, whose husband (an Afghanistan veteran) departed that very morning for two weeks of Navy reserve duty, about his active and National Guard experience, all infantry. He went on to think out loud about changing his military career because infantry deployment is not good if you are thinking about starting a family. I couldn’t agree more.

Wasted

Gut wrenching story in the WP this morning about the war's forever impacts. This is nothing new to anyone who understands war but, given the America's collective ignorance of war's reality, the story is a timely reminder of costs that will last far into the future. Linda Bilimes and Joseph Stiglitz have quantified the long term costs but this story puts human beings into that calculation.

One story connected with me deeply.

Amanda Jordan, whose Marine husband was killed three days into the war, says she doesn't know what bothers her more _ the days that go by when no one speaks of the war, or the punditry. At a local diner she frequents with her 11-year-old son near their home in Enfield, Conn., she's contemplated standing up and leaving so he doesn't hear when people say Iraq was unnecessarily invaded.

"This is like my life. You're saying my spouse, my child's father, is dead for no reason," says Jordan, a 39-year-old former paralegal who is studying to be a therapist specializing in grief. "That's a pretty harsh thing to hear all the time."

I'm so sorry, Mrs. Jordan, for your loss and for the hurt at the thought that his death was a waste. No doubt, your husband served with honor and courage. You can find some solace in the appreciation of his comrades and his dedication to you and his country. But I cannot, if I look objectively at what the war is doing to America and Iraq, see that this mission was worth his or any of the almost many lives--American and Iraqi--forever changed by this war.

I respect your husband's sacrifice and your family's loss but I cannot ignore the fundamental fact that America's leaders betrayed us all by starting an unnecessary war. I must speak and act to prevent more lives from being wasted and to change American policy to one that actually sustains our security in a rapidly changing world. I apologize if any of my statements cause you grief. I speak and act because I want America to be worthy of your husband's courage and honor.

Godspeed, Mrs. Jordan. May this nation never forget your husband's sacrifice and may it never again betray that sacrifice.

Aren't We All?

The staff sergeant's wife:

Some families had braced for longer separations. Tracy Gee, whose husband, Staff Sgt. Wendell Gee, left in January for his third tour in Iraq, said she had grown so resigned to delays in his return that she had told their three children that he would not be home until July 2008.

"They were extended again and again and again, so finally no one believed them," she said. She decided to expect a long absence because "it's a lot easier to get happy than be upset." Still, she said, "I'm just ready for it to be over."