Support Our Troops? The Shameful Reality. Last week, the House of Representatives passed a non-binding resolution opposing the President’s Iraq surge plans. The resolution finally forced members of Congress to take a stand. Although I applaud that this step, the reality is that this Congress will need to go farther and address funding the war that is their only real leverage on the president.

But there is something that Congress can do immediately that will have a more personal effect on the troops and their families. Congress can do something about the deplorable conditions at our nation’s military hospitals. In a terrific piece of investigative reporting, a two part series in Sunday and Monday’s Washington Post described how injured and maimed Iraq veterans are being slowly forgotten at Walter Reed Hospital. The Post calls Walter Reed “a virtual town of desperation and dysfunction (where) the wounded are socked away for months and years in random buildings and barracks…”. The article describes a bureaucracy that is overwhelmed, understaffed and insensitive to our veterans.

There aren’t enough counselors to support the veterans and their families. Another soldier who had his uniform cut off by medics in Iraq who were trying to save his life, is unable to get a uniform to wear to the ceremony where he is to receive his Purple Heart. When he tries to get a uniform, he finds that the Army bureaucracy has lost his paperwork and won’t issue him one because it has no record of his ever having been in Iraq.

Worse, some injured soldiers have to fight for disability pay because the Army claims their injuries resulted from pre-existing conditions. This must add immeasurably to the stress these veterans and their families face. Without sufficient disability pay, many face a lonely and frightening future. They rightly wonder how they will survive when they can’t work.

It’s shameful that these soldiers face living with permanent disabilities when many suffered their injuries because they didn’t have the proper equipment to protect them against roadside bombs. But it is a national disgrace that the reward for their sacrifice is that they now have to fight a military bureaucracy for the disability payments that would at least enable them to live without fear of financial ruin.

Congress may not be able stop them from going to Iraq, but at the minimum, it is Congress’ obligation to make sure that our veterans receive the benefits and care that many will need for the rest of their lives. This will require more funding and more oversight of how the military is dealing with our veterans.

One step each member of congress can take immediately is to “adopt” injured soldiers from his or her district and make sure that each one of them gets the services and disability payments that they desperately need.

Unlike the non-binding resolution, this is an issue that requires no debate.

Labels: Congress, Iraq, military

  2:32 PM •  0 Comments • Links to this post

Surging into the New Year How’s this for a new year’s resolution? Looking like “Alice in Wonderland”, President Bush wants to send 20,000 more troops to Iraq to give peace a chance there. Democracy in Iraq seems to be a bigger concern to the president than heeding the results of our own democratic elections at home. Many of us thought, or at least hoped, that the clear message from the November elections was that our troops should be withdrawn from Iraq. Instead, the president now intends to send more young men and women. The president and the pretender, John McCain, call this a "surge". Let’s call it what it really is: an escalation.

Over the next weeks we will watch a parade of administration officials ride their limos up to Capitol Hill and solemnly justify the president’s decision to escalate the war. Democrats will hold hearings, and question and lecture all the president’s men and women. After they have reviewed the studies, reports and testimony, and after several hundreds more deaths of American soldiers and marines, they will come to the conclusion that we came to last fall when we voted to end this war.

Though Democrats have been united in their opposition to the war, they have been vague and cautious in how they would force Bush to begin a withdrawal hoping that hearings and more debate might force the president to finally come to his senses. What they should realize is that this president doesn’t care what the Democrats in Congress think.

Soon the Democrats are going to face a moment of truth. The question will come down to this: will Congress be willing to stand up to Bush’s insistence on expanding the war by reducing or cutting off the funding for the war? Fearing that they would look weak and be accused of not supporting our troops, Democrats have been reluctant to play this card. But by not standing up to the President and exercising their constitutional authority of the power of the purse, the Democratic Congress’ opposition to the war will look like a house of cards that the president will easily roll over.

Labels: Democrats, elections, Iraq, New Year, troops

  12:15 PM •  0 Comments • Links to this post

The Confusion of Disaster - A local response to the Iraq Study Group Despite their best intentions, it remains to be seen whether a new Iraq policy will emerge now that the Democrats are in control of Congress. Democrats themselves aren’t clear on what to do. The long awaited Iraq Study Group’s report is headed for the discount table at Barnes & Noble, its major contribution being to publicly acknowledge what most people in America already know - that we are losing the war. And, its prescriptions, like calling for training more Iraqi troops are more of what we have already heard. Remember, “We will stand down when they stand up”? The reality is that there is no functioning central Iraq government or even an idea to stand up for.

While politicians in Washington dither, fuss and fume about what to do next, American soldiers and marines continue to die in Iraq. Senators obsequiously congratulated the new Defense Secretary for his candor, but acknowledgement of reality is a long way from having a new policy. The real

Labels: Democrats, Iraq

  4:32 PM •  0 Comments • Links to this post