BernieHund: The Political Watchdog

According to USA Today, one in four of American homeless is a veteran.

Call me un-American.  Say I’m not a patriot.  I will admit that I have protested the War in Iraq ever since the first night of General Tommy Franks’ fireworks display… call it Shock’N'Awe or whatever. 

However, like all American citizens I have supported our troops and will continue to support them until the last yellow ribbon is removed from the old oak tree.  My question to all of us is why do we continue to allow our Senators and our Representatives to fund a war that is maiming and killing our young men and women?  For those who are willing to make the sacrifices for freedom around the world, why are we willing to sit in the comfort of our warm homes and let them sleep on the streets when they come home?

We can start a war with no plan to end it.  We can place flags across caskets and say we are praying for the dead and for their families.  We can move the families off base within ninety days of a soldier being killed and say we are sorry for the inconvenience.  We feel no shame that the families of our soldiers are all too often forced to use Food Stamps to feed their children while one or both parents is serving our country. 

We bring our maimed and dismembered soldiers home to an underfunded inefficient hospital system, where until recently they had to pay to make a phone call, where the families are charged for their meals.  We can pretend that Post Traumatic Stress Disorder doesn’t exist.  We can discharge a soldier for being shot or injured in the line of duty, often refusing to pay his signing bonus while trying to whittle his disability benefits down to nothing.  We can watch as a brain injured soldier destroys himself or withers away.  We watch as our service men and women are left to fend for themselves in a country that is not prepared to accept them and one they are not ready to return to.  We can watch our veterans sleep in our streets and under our bridges.  Yet, we cannot provide a fund to provide for the transition of soliders back into society.  We cannot provide healthcare and housing for our veterans.  How dare anyone in Washington say we don’t have the money! 

Before another penny is spent to fund one more day of war, the American citizens must demand that Congress provide funds to take care of those who sacrificed for our country.  It is an abomination for our war veterans to return home and be forced to live on the streets.  And, yes… they are forced to live on the streets because we don’t take care of their needs when we break their bodies, their hearts and their minds. 

We use these soldiers to fulfill the fantasies of old men and when G.I. Joe breaks or is damaged we throw him away. 

But, what those old men haven’t learned… from management 101… when they fail to respond to the needs of one of these soldiers, they aren’t letting one person down, putting one person in jeopardy.  They are jeopardizing families and communities and our nation. 

The idea of one of our soldiers sleeping on the street for whatever reason is a national disgrace.  The Decider in Chief and his puppeteer should be ashamed.  Rumsfeld with his inept arrogant sarcasm should be ashamed.  Gates for continuing to facilitate the insanity of his predecessor should be ashamed.  Congress should be ashamed.  We as a nation should be ashamed.  We have disgraced ourselves and our nation by allowing our elected officials to continue to fund a war that breaks our men and women and does nothing to put them back together again. 

I was, am, and always will be against the war that led to our occupation of Iraq.  It is wrong now, it was wrong when the Decider and Dick decided it was their mission to lead this country into their war of choice.  How dare they think we have a choice when it comes to taking care of the lives they have broken.