"The Making and Un-making of a Marine"

Supporting the Troops

Imagine a group of terrorists is surrounding your house, how much would you pay for protection? I mean it. Right now, how much would you be willing to draw out of your checking account, pull from your 401-K, or extract from under your mattress? I want you to keep that figure in your mind as you read on.

Now think about the troops coming home form Iraq and Afghanistan. You've been watching them on TV doing the job of protecting our country, they're being wounded and killed daily.

As a therapist at Four Winds Hospital in Katonah, NY, I've worked with Holocaust survivors, World War II vets, Korean vets, Vietnam vets, Desert Storm vets, Iraq vets as well as 911 victims. Many of these people were suffering with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD. Most of them did not come to the hospital until months, years, even decades after the events had taken place. Our soldiers now are coming home with PTSD. Remember that home protection figure I asked you to come up with? We need that money now to help pay for the treatment of the young people that we exposed to the trauma and stress of war.

Don't think you're going to escape this expense. We, the American public, will pay for many years to come. Over 100,000 vets have committed suicide since the Vietnam War. The ranks of the homeless are heavily numbered with Vietnam vets. Addiction has been rampant for years in the vet population. In other words: Society pays later for what they don't take care of today.

Let's get back to what you're willing to pay your protectors. We all know that these men and women have done a great job, so what do we do when they come home wounded or are in need of help? We shut down VA hospitals. In addition to this, Anne Usher wrote in the Austin American Statesman: "Soldiers suffering from the stress of combat in Iraq are being misdiagnosed by military doctors as having a personality disorder, lawyers and psychologists say, which allows them to be quickly and honorably discharged but stigmatizes them with a label that is hard to dislodge and can hurt them financially."

The article goes on to speak about the cost of treating PTSD and how much more expensive treatment is than to discharge soldiers with personality disorders. Some health care professionals believe the diagnosis of PTSD is not being carefully assessed and the symptoms of personality disorder show up in the beginning stages of PTSD. The bottom line is PTSD is costly to treat and places the onus of responsibility on the government.

Yes we have a volunteer army; these men and women did sign up. Did they know the truth about what they were getting into? No. Nor did we. And yet the revelations since then has not slowed down the number of jobless volunteers enlisting. So what would support to our returning soldiers look like? To start with, let's acknowledge that they offer the ultimate - their lives. This deserves the highest honors we civilians can bestow: Care, concern and acceptance when they come home.

War is a powerful initiation. No one comes back from it the way they left. We must accept this and stop expecting to see the same young people we sent off to war return home. Their wounds, both physical and psychological, have altered them. These changes need to be integrated and healed so veterans can find productive roles in society.

Our veterans are more than soldiers who served. They are our warriors who protected our country. In today's high-tech gigabit world there is a danger in seeing our soldiers as little more than "war-bits." It becomes easy to forget that a human being is holding the joy stick in a M1 Abrams tanks and that the video feed is a killing field. Video games can be turned on and off. In war, when the power switch is turned off it's never turned back on.

Our veterans have protected everything we have, and deserve everything we have to help heal them. We should offer the most advanced therapies to returning soldiers. The billions we are spending to rebuild Iraq are no more important than what is needed to revitalize veterans health care here at home. The goal of veteran treatment should be well-adjusted men and women who can function in society - nothing less. This, of course, will cost lots of money. But remember how we started this article.

I asked you come up with the dollar amount you would be willing to spend to protect the lives in your home. Now it's time to offer that money to those protectors who have done such a good job doing just that. If you've been struggling with understanding what the phrase "supporting the troops means," I hope this helps.

 
Larry Winters