What's changed in 30 years? Not much.
While trying to think of an original way of approaching this weeks blog entry, I found an old book at my local library. It was in the bargain bin for sixty cents, and it was called "Sez Who? Sez Me." It is a collection of the legendary Chicago newspaper columnist Mike Royko's Chicago Sun-Times articles dating back to the Vietnam era. Royko was a fierce intellect, and I envy anyone who can talk so boldly about the way things ought to be and keep from losing his common touch. Anyway, an article that caught my eye was called "A Faceless Man's Plea," and it related the sad tale of Leroy Bailey, a young man who had just turned 21 years old when a Vietnamese rocket tore through the roof of his tent and mangled his face to the point where it simply didn't exist anymore. When Royko wrote about him in 1973, he was living in his brother's basement in La Grange, knitting wool hats and listening to a tape player. He wanted to be able to eat solid food again, which he had been unable to do even after three years of operations under the auspices of the Veteran's Administration. A plastic surgeon by the name of Dr. Janda believed that he could fix Leroy's face to the point that he could eat solid food, but it would take six separate operations, all of which the VA would have to pay for. According to the VA, however, they would not pay because "the treatment was for a condition other than your service-related disability." A North Vietnamese rocket exploded in his face, and now he has no face, and they claimed it was not "service related?" In the end, Leroy Bailey was able to get payment from the VA, but it's doubtful that anything would have been different without Royko's help. Royko wrote a follow-up column detailing the various levels of VA bureaucracy and buck-passing and behind-covering that anyone familiar with government agencies knows about. (When I said we needed big government, I didn't mean wasteful, slow government - just one that stretches far enough and wide enough to protect most Americans.) Now that a new Vietnam is upon us, and more American troops are being maimed than ever before, and post-traumatic stress is becoming a real problem again, what has changed? Nothing. The surgeon general of the Army has been forced to resign, and Bob Dole has been appointed to investigate the VA, but nothing has really changed since the inception of the Veteran's Administration. Fifty years of Presidents and Congresses have had a chance to do real work to overhaul the system and do right by our troops, and none of them have even taken a shot at it. And this is not just their fault. Those Presidents and Congresses were doing work that was important, just not the work of fixing the Veterans Administration. At the end of the Vietnam War, we as Americans were sick of thinking about it, sick of talking about it. We just wanted to forget the whole thing, and we refused to hold our government accountable for what happened to the kids in uniform who didn't walk away unscathed. And if we're not careful, the New Vietnam will cause us to do the same thing. We will be so relieved that it's all over with that we will forget about those who need us, and we will not demand proper treatment of our wounded Veterans. If we are truly Americans, and if we really love our troops the way we say we do, we will demand that this President and all future Presidents make overhauling the Veteran's Administration a priority, now and until the job is completed. There are too many Leroy Baileys as it is. See related article.
While trying to think of an original way of approaching this weeks blog entry, I found an old book at my local library. It was in the bargain bin for sixty cents, and it was called "Sez Who? Sez Me." It is a collection of the legendary Chicago newspaper columnist Mike Royko's Chicago Sun-Times articles dating back to the Vietnam era. Royko was a fierce intellect, and I envy anyone who can talk so boldly about the way things ought to be and keep from losing his common touch. Anyway, an article that caught my eye was called "A Faceless Man's Plea," and it related the sad tale of Leroy Bailey, a young man who had just turned 21 years old when a Vietnamese rocket tore through the roof of his tent and mangled his face to the point where it simply didn't exist anymore. When Royko wrote about him in 1973, he was living in his brother's basement in La Grange, knitting wool hats and listening to a tape player. He wanted to be able to eat solid food again, which he had been unable to do even after three years of operations under the auspices of the Veteran's Administration. A plastic surgeon by the name of Dr. Janda believed that he could fix Leroy's face to the point that he could eat solid food, but it would take six separate operations, all of which the VA would have to pay for. According to the VA, however, they would not pay because "the treatment was for a condition other than your service-related disability." A North Vietnamese rocket exploded in his face, and now he has no face, and they claimed it was not "service related?" In the end, Leroy Bailey was able to get payment from the VA, but it's doubtful that anything would have been different without Royko's help. Royko wrote a follow-up column detailing the various levels of VA bureaucracy and buck-passing and behind-covering that anyone familiar with government agencies knows about. (When I said we needed big government, I didn't mean wasteful, slow government - just one that stretches far enough and wide enough to protect most Americans.) Now that a new Vietnam is upon us, and more American troops are being maimed than ever before, and post-traumatic stress is becoming a real problem again, what has changed? Nothing. The surgeon general of the Army has been forced to resign, and Bob Dole has been appointed to investigate the VA, but nothing has really changed since the inception of the Veteran's Administration. Fifty years of Presidents and Congresses have had a chance to do real work to overhaul the system and do right by our troops, and none of them have even taken a shot at it. And this is not just their fault. Those Presidents and Congresses were doing work that was important, just not the work of fixing the Veterans Administration. At the end of the Vietnam War, we as Americans were sick of thinking about it, sick of talking about it. We just wanted to forget the whole thing, and we refused to hold our government accountable for what happened to the kids in uniform who didn't walk away unscathed. And if we're not careful, the New Vietnam will cause us to do the same thing. We will be so relieved that it's all over with that we will forget about those who need us, and we will not demand proper treatment of our wounded Veterans. If we are truly Americans, and if we really love our troops the way we say we do, we will demand that this President and all future Presidents make overhauling the Veteran's Administration a priority, now and until the job is completed. There are too many Leroy Baileys as it is. See related article.
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