Taking Responsibility at Walter Reed I am not sure why it took a series of articles in the Washington Post to expose the shameful treatment of outpatient soldiers at Walter Reed Army Hospital. After all, the hospital lies only a few short miles from the White House, Pentagon and Capitol Hill.

But lets be glad the Post did since apparently no one else was going to. So this got me to thinking about the concept of “taking responsibility”.

As a nation, we supposedly had learned from the Vietnam war when soldiers returned home and were ignored, or worse, excoriated. Remember the movie Born On The 4th of July ?

This time was going to be different.

The new mantra has been “support our troops”. We heard this even as they went off to a war that was started on faulty and fabricated intelligence.

The politicians made sure we knew that they “supported our troops” even as they sent them off to war without the body armor and armored up humvees that would have saved countless lives and injuries.

We may feel like we “support our troops” but don’t ask the soldiers at Walter Reed and other Army hospitals.

The soldiers hear us saying that we support our troops, but what they see and experience is neglect.

The current outrage over Walter Reed from official Washington is justified, but it has to ring a little hollow for the soldiers and their families who have had a lonely fight with the bureaucracy for the past three years.

It is fair for them to ask, “where has everybody been” ?

Now we are treated to the spectacle of Generals “taking responsibility” and politicians, from the President to Congress, vowing to get to the bottom of this and fix it.

Let’s hope that they finally do.

But all this has made me wonder about “taking responsibility”. Taking responsibility should mean doing your job as you are expected to do it. There used to be consequences for not doing your job. Now apparently all you have to do is “take responsibility”.

It’s as if saying those magical words somehow absolves those responsible from being accountable for their actions. When you have to explain that you acted irresponsibly, isn’t it too late to “take responsibility”?

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Labels: politics, Responsibility, Walter Reed

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