Just a Bump in the Beltway

Reflections of a Vietnam War Widow: It Doesn't End When They Come Home

By Penny Coleman, AlterNet. Posted June 25, 2007.

The Department of Defense recently announced that it was hiring additional mental health professionals to deal with the stream of traumatized vets returning from the occupation of Iraq. A widow of an earlier war warns that the effort may be too little and too late.

Thirty-five percent of returning vets have already sought out mental health treatment since coming home, and, as the symptoms of PTSD often take years to manifest themselves and the stigma still discourages many from asking for the help they need, these numbers are only the ominous beginning. Moreover, every war not only creates its own casualties, but reignites the symptoms of veterans of previous wars. The Washington Post reported a year ago that 'Vietnam veterans are the vast majority of VA's PTSD disability cases--more than 73 percent." Ten thousand of those were new claims filed by veterans who were entering the system for the first time, more that thirty years after their war came to an end.

What the Defense Department and the VA don't want to acknowledge is that there is no cure for PTSD. Disheartening as it is to say, the new psychiatrists and social workers that the army is now promising to hire are simply too little, too late. The young men and women now coming home will suffer the effects of their combat experience for the rest of their lives. Every day. They will continue to have memories, and nightmares, and flashbacks. Many will continue to be hyper-vigilant and have "startle responses" that are often violent. Many will have trouble managing their anger and their relationships--for the rest of their lives. Many will try to self-medicate to help them forget, and far too many will die by their own hands. This destruction is never limited to an individual; it ripples out, through families, communities and society as a whole.

But that sad truth cannot be used as an excuse for inaction. There is another truth that might at first appear to be contradictory, but assuredly is not. These kids need all the help they can get as soon as possible. Their psychic injuries may not be curable, but their lives, and the lives of their families, can be made infinitely less difficult if they are given the care and support they have earned. They can be assured that their suffering is a normal reaction to an abnormal situation; they can talk to other vets and practice compassion for themselves by feeling it for others; they can be taught techniques for managing their stress and anxiety; they can be relieved of the added burden of financial worry; and they may, at least in the short run, be dissuaded from suicide.

I find hope in the fact that public attention and better knowledge of mental health issues have helped legitimize the psychiatric injuries soldiers sustain in every war. Though government apologists still shamefully spin and distort the numbers, and though military culture still encourages stigmatization, and even punishment, for what they insist on calling weakness or malingering, there is still far more information about posttraumatic stress injuries available, and that makes it less likely that this generation of soldiers and their families will experience the same degree of isolation on top of their grief that we felt. The difference is that we are talking about it now.

This is what I meant when I said that the cost of this war can't be measured in dollars alone. How do you measure the suffering of the vets and their families? What is the cost of suicide? I want to know how the pro-war bloggers answer those questions, I want to know if they even begin to comprehend the societal costs of their toy war in the sands. They seem to have no idea that it is real people who fight wars and their communities and families which bear the costs. To the pro-war crowd, especially the Bushies, soldiers are just fungible widgets to be pushed around on their chessboard. I know this attitude, I ran into it every time I ran a labor negotiation. There is a very clear "them" v. "us" to the elites. They have no fellow feeling for anyone other than their immediate peers.

You think we don't have a class system in this country? Sit in on a labor contract negotiation sometime.