Veterans in Crisis Need More Than a ‘Thank You’

Every year, we pause on Veterans Day to celebrate our veterans for their service. But for decades now, many returning veterans have asked us for more than platitudes.

“You’re making me nervous every time you thank me for my service,” Veterans For Peace co-founder Doug Rawlings wrote in his poem “Walking the Wall.” He added, “nothing really is as it seems.”

Many of the thousands of sailors who disembarked from the USS Abraham Lincoln in San Diego this October would agree. For most of this year, the ship was stationed off the coast of Iran, where the Trump administration launched a senseless and unwinnable war of choice this February.

For months, sailors were subjected to “moldy showers, broken toilets, laundry down for weeks, long stretches with no hot water, a meal that came down to half a cup of rice and two tortillas. No soap, deodorant, or toothpaste,” according to California Congressman Mike Levin.

This lengthy confinement impacted their mental health, too. One sailor jumped overboard in an attempted suicide. In fact, according to Pentagon officials, eight other sailors attempted suicide before the ship returned from its tour.

In addition, Bloomberg News reported a cluster of five suicides among those working with Cyber Command, concluding that understaffing and increased stress from our war in Iran was a factor.

This Veterans Day, Americans should ponder how we can stop these military adventures that harm our own soldiers as much as they damage our perceived enemies.

In their new book, Courage or Complicity: How Veterans Are Responding to the Assault on Democracy, Steve Early and Suzanne Gordon offer an impressive survey of how politicians have underfunded and underserved veterans. The authors point to new research linking veterans’ disabilities, as well as a higher likelihood of being incarcerated, directly to their service.

Courage Or Complicity paints a damning picture of military life for women soldiers as well, reporting that one in four experience sexual assault. As surveyed by the advocacy group Protect Our Defenders, 44 percent of these service members were encouraged to drop their complaints. Some were even given “other than honorable discharges,” Early and Gordon report, often depriving them of future VA healthcare.

They cite a 2018 survey of female veterans by the Disabled American Veterans, which found that 60 percent of female veterans felt that their military service had been injurious to their mental or physical health. The suicide rate among female veterans is 2.5 times higher than women in the general population — and increasing faster than male veteran suicides.

The authors of Courage Or Complicity are an authoritative source on the Trump administration’s drive to dismantle and outsource VA health care. Often, those who served suffer long waits, only to be seen by physicians who are unfamiliar with their experiences — including medical conditions resulting from exposure to chemical weapons and burn pits, as well as PTSD and moral injury.

Early and Gordon also offer an encouraging look at how activist veterans are organizing to build unity among veterans groups and a wide range of trade unions that represent federal employees — including those who provide direct services to veterans and those who help all Americans.

Most heartening are the stories of rank-and-file workers, many of them veterans, who began creating cross-union coalitions, such as the Federal Unionists Network, even before their national leaders began to unite and mobilize.

When the USS Abraham Lincoln finally pulled into San Diego, sailors were greeted by family members and politicians clamoring to thank them for their service. Nearby, Veterans For Peace arranged for a giant billboard that read: “Respect Our Sailors and Marines. Bring Them Home. End The Wars!’

This year, that would be worth more than platitudes.