Commentary—

Support The Troops; Ignore The Vets

By William A. Collins

Crippled now,

My service done:

Ignored by all

In Washington.

Veterans of World War II were much admired. They fought in a popular conflict that gave our nation great satisfaction. If they made it home, they were heroes. We gave them housing, health care, education, and jobs. The American Legion and VFW were pillars of the local community and the nation.

But that was then and this is now. Our wars since 1945 have been more ambiguous, as have the reflections of our returning troops. As history casts shadows over some of those conflicts, it simultaneously darkens the image of those who fought. The soldiers may have been heroic, but their cause painfully tainted.

Equally corrosive to veteran stature is the nature of their wounds. In Vietnam the culprit was Agent Orange. In the Gulf it was poisoned air and depleted uranium. These victims have not suffered heroic injuries in the eyes of Washington. Indeed the Pentagon does what it can to hush its responsibility for them, since our sister nations take a dim view of the morality of all those weapons. As living evidence of their widespread use, vets are thus shunted into obscurity and urged to fend for themselves.

And now we have a war where even traditional wounds are an embarrassment. Photos of our injured and dying GIs, which used to spur us to greater patriotism, are prohibited. This time they might spur us to greater protest. Returnees, both dead and afflicted, are thus ignored by the White House and by the press. Indeed one vet has made his momentary mark by contesting the invoice he received for his meals while recovering at an army hospital.

In addition you can well understand why the Pentagon wants to keep down its expenditures for those who come home. It needs all its cash for the contractors who are still there. Big corporations now carry out many tasks that soldiers once performed, but unlike those soldiers, they get paid big bucks. That’s where the bulk of our war budget goes.

But when a vet finally does return to home and hearth you might suppose that at the very least he would be well cared for. Forget it. The president has reduced the income threshold for entitlement to health care. Now if you earn more than $25,000 from all sources, you’re medically on your own. Consequently whole regiments of vets have no health insurance at all, while damage to their lungs, brains, and nervous systems is not considered “service-connected.” Nor are there any longer housing programs, so traumatized vets are homeless far beyond their ratio in the community.

All this leaves Connecticut in a bit of a bind. You’d think that veterans would be a responsibility of the federal government, but what do you do when the feds shirk? These are our own heroes — we can’t just let them lie in the street. Thus there exists a state Veterans Home and Hospital in Rocky Hill. While a great resource, it has a long been a haven of patronage and underfunding. This hardly comes as a shock, since policymakers understandably feel that the federal Veterans Administration should be ministering to all returnees’ needs at its own facilities in West Haven and Newington.

So perhaps out of frustration that Washington is treating our National Guardsmen, among others, so shabbily, several new proposals are suddenly circulating in Hartford. One scheme of the lieutenant governor’s would relieve Connecticut guardsmen and reservists of income and property taxes while serving in combat zones. Another would make those same guardsman eligible for benefits from the Soldiers’, Sailors’ and Marines’ Fund. A third would create a special legislative committee to focus, at last, on veterans’ needs.

These are all small potatoes, but they reflect understandable offense at the administration’s neglect of our returning servicemen.

(Columnist William A. Collins is a former state representative and a former mayor of Norwalk.)