New Book Exposes Harsh Truths About Veterans-and America. - Beyond Chron

Why America Fails its Vets

Health care, housing, climate change, education, racism and the war on democracy typically top the list of America’s problems.  The mistreatment of veterans and America’s outrageously high military budget get less attention. Yet veterans are linked to most of these issues. This interconnection is demonstrated in Our Veterans: Winners, Losers, Friends and Enemies on the New Terrain of Veterans Affairs,  the brilliant new book by Suzanne Gordon, Steve Early and Jasper Craven.

This is the first book I have come across that addresses the social, political and personal impacts of what it means to be a military veteran in the United States. Many of America’s policy failures  are found in its mistreatment of veterans—-despite all the flag waving and demands to “support our troops.”

Vets and Health Care

Central to the book is the broken politics surrounding veterans’ health care.

The Veterans Health Administration (VHA) offers a great public health care model. Since the United States is the only industrialized nation lacking universal health care, the VHA’s success helps build political support for Medicare for All.

Unfortunately, the right-wing Koch brothers and other corporate interests view veterans’ positive health care experiences as a threat to the private health industry. They have prioritized privatizing the Veteran’s Health Administration. Our Veterans details how corporate interests and their media allies have helped undermine the VHA.  These anti-public health political forces succeeded in getting the federal government to divert billions of dollars into private medical companies without requiring much if any accountability.

Our Veterans explains how private health care companies get away with taking public dollars despite failing to meet the high standards of the VHA. Suzanne Gordon has written many stories (some for Beyond Chron), critical of these privatization efforts. The authors show how the NY Times and other media created a false crisis around VHA care involving waiting times and other issues. And even when private health care performs worse on these exact issues, the all-in on privatization momentum—fueled by campaign contributions—continues.

Before reading this book I thought all vets could get VHA care. Wrong. Only vets whose health problems can be shown to be service related. And vets who get “bad paper” discharges—not surprising disproportionately issued to soldiers of color—get no VHA care no matter how bad their service-related disability.

The authors convincingly show how veterans’ health care is sacrificed to serve right-wing and corporate interests. This point was again proved last week. As I wrote this review Republican Senators used the filibuster to defeat the PACT Act, which would “establish a presumption of service connection for 23 respiratory illnesses and cancers related to the smoke from burn pits” for veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan. The bill also created similar protections for certain toxins veterans of the Cold War, Vietnam, and other conflicts were exposed to.

PACT would benefit about one in five living veterans. Yet we have the same Republicans who attack athletes for not standing up for the national anthem denying desperately needed health care to vets.

Post-Discharge Transitions

Many low-income people enlist in the military due to a lack of other job or educational options. The military offers recruiting bonuses and the potential for college funding. The authors note that many cities have recruiting offices for the military while the federal government has nothing similar for other federal jobs, such as at the post office or for other non-military functions. The goal is to provide such limited alternatives that low-income people feel that the military is their best if not only real option.

Military service is said to further post-military job prospects. But Our Veterans shows that we have come a long way from the days when WW2 vets got generous benefits from the GI Bill. Today, these post-service opportunities primarily apply to officers, not enlisted personnel. Finding jobs can be difficult for other veterans due to negative and false stereotypes about their emotional stability.

Our Veterans describes how many vets join local police forces. These military vets are far more likely to  engage in shooting incidents on the job. The militarization of police forces, seen prominently in response to Black Lives Matter protests, encourages veterans to see policing street protests in the context of foreign wars.

The Power (and Failure) of Veterans Organizations

The book devotes two chapters to a subject that has long deserved greater scrutiny: the role of veteran’s advocacy organizations. Why do vets experience so many problems when many multi-million dollar veterans organizations claim to support veterans?  The book tells the tawdry story of corporate and right-wing interests using veterans’ groups to promote their political goals—and it names names.

Our Veterans also reports on the more progressive vets groups that emerged to help those in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. San Francisco is blessed to have the most impactful progressive veterans group of all, Swords to Plowshares. The book also praises the Paralyzed Veterans of America for being alone among the older, large national veterans’ organizations to address racism in the wake of the George Floyd protests.

The detailed accounts of large veterans groups working against the interests of veterans is disturbing.  Most of these groups joined most vets backed draft-dodger Donald Trump in 2016. Let’s hope the light shone by this book on the anti-vet activities of many veterans groups—along with many vets in Congress—forces a change.

That’s why people need to read this book. Our Veterans can help build progressive activism and public support for more favorable policies toward veterans. The book is a page-turner, and reads like a series of fast paced magazine articles.

The social justice policies that help veterans also help most Americans. Our Veterans greatest triumph may be in demonstrating this connection.

(Authors Suzanne Gordon and Steve Early will be speaking about Our Veterans in San Francisco at an event to benefit KPFA radio on September 7, 6-8pm at the Veterans Memorial Building, 401 Van Ness Avenue,  Room 206. Tickets available here.)

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