It's Saturday. November 12.

Well, Veteran's Day is over. We go back to ignoring them again, right?

Veterans account for a troubling 20 percent of our nation’s suicides, according to national figures. This means that every day in the United States, an average of 18 veterans take their own lives – or about one every 80 minutes.

About 27 percent of Oregon’s suicides are veterans.

From 2005 to 2010, active service members took their own lives at a rate of approximately one every 36 hours...

Post Traumatic Stress may occur in those who experience or witness intense violence, serious accidents, or life-threatening events. It can make people feel angry, hopeless, fearful, horrified, and overwhelmed. Post Traumatic Stress is treatable.

Many veterans and active military balk at seeking help through traditional channels due to fear of negative career impact, the stigma of perceived weakness among their peers and frustration with red tape. Left untreated, the challenges can intensify as they feel more isolated.

Veterans Week, Part III: V-Day +1 +1

I cannot say a word of this better than my friend, Robert, did in his November 12th blog post at Plead Ignorance. I haven't yet obtained his permission to re-post his article, but, just this once I conclude that it is, indeed, "better to ask forgiveness than to ask permission." It's that good.

Veterans Day +1

Yesterday was Veterans Day, in some places, Armistice Day; a day when we are supposed to remember and honor the men and women in uniform who serve, and who have died serving, our nation in times of war and peace. And today, the day after Veterans Day, we can then return to forgetting those sacrifices and ignoring the unequal price they pay to ensure the comforts we enjoy.

Since the Conservatives recently regained their section of Capitol Hill turf the news media has been awash in championing their agenda; which is to cut government and reduce taxes (aka: foster unfettered expansion of moneyed interests). Example: CBS news anchor Katie Couric (who I believe has no more stature as a journalist than the kid who delivers the daily paper) touted all the ways in which the Conservatives plan to reign in government and runaway spending. With no fact checking or journalistic inquiry, she parroted the “facts” about the Social Security System being in “red ink” and on the brink of collapse and being a major cause for the burgeoning deficit. That fact is, that is NOT true!

So now the new prevailing and perceived shining path toward restoring America’s Greatness reads as follows: Ending tax cuts for the wealthiest 1% of our elite is off the table. Targeted instead are the costs of supporting the poorest of our citizens; Social Security, Medicare, Welfare. It will be an ironic twist of fate if any Tea Baggerson unemployment voted Republican – unlikely UC benefits will be further extended, these folks might be the first to realize how they just voted to cut their own economic throats.

But among all the gnashing of teeth and wringing of hands over concern for our increasing national debt, the absence of the cost of our unnecessary and fruitless war in Afghanistan is the overlooked Elephant in the Room. We are borrowing close to One Billion dollars A DAY from China to maintain this war which has no expectation of any positive outcome whatsoever. Instead, we will continue to pay for it off the backs of people perceived as too lazy to go out and get jobs… which, incidentally, don’t exist. Large segments of our nation are apparently thirstily drinking the Kool Aid being served up by our political leaders.

The cost to our country for this war, and the Iraq war, have been deftly shielded and sanitized for our consumption. This has not always been true in our history. During World War II our nation sold bonds to finance the war. Everyone paid taxes to fund the war and few complained. It was necessary for all citizens to participate in one way or another in the defense of freedom. Everyone felt the pinch; consumer items such as sugar, coffee and materials like rubber and gasoline were rationed. No one was exempt, if you were not serving in uniform you were, in some way, supporting the soldiers who were. We were pulling together.

Again taxes were increased during the Vietnam War. In some sense, the cost to the taxpayer for Vietnam was but one of many pressures the public felt, in addition to the photos of caskets being shipped back home, which forced the government to yield to the growing outcries to bring that war to a close.

That is not the case today. Only recently the Obama administration has lifted the prohibition of pictures being released of flag-draped caskets being returned from the Middle East. But these images seldom make it into the consciousness of the news media; apparently more newsworthy: a Tea Bagger in a three-cornered hat with a misspelled sign calling the president a Socialist is the media’s primary focus.

Those in power have taken great pains to insure that this war costs the American taxpayer nothing; unless, of course, it happens to be YOUR child or loved one who has chosen to serve in the active military. I have not heard one public official suggest taxes be increased to pay for the War on Terrorism. And now it is quite clear that they neither want to factor in the cost of the war anywhere into the incendiary discussions about the rise of our national deficit.

I find it tragic that every day men and women go out on patrol in desolate places of the world based on pointless strategies, facing death and/or injury; while at home, Americans stop but one day a year to honor their commitment with parades and plastic flags made in China. Well hey… they volunteered to be in the service, didn’t they? I wonder who’s on “Dancing with the Stars” tonight?

Further reading:
1. "Bush-Era Tax Cuts Depart From History of America War Finance" Urban Institute
2. “The history of America’s tax system can be written largely as a history of America’s wars.” and Taxes, by Steven A. Bank, Kirk J. Stark, Joseph J. Thorndike."

Good work, my skeptical friend.

Veterans Week, Part II: Adam's Table

We got into Nashville late yesterday and checked into our motel, exhausted. The rush hour traffic from BNA was swollen by folks arriving for the Country Music Awards this weekend and slowed by the unaccustomed total darkness at 5:30 p.m.; on this easternmost edge of the Central Time Zone, darkness falls fast and early when Daylight Savings Time ends. We were weary, aching from sitting all day in cars, airports, and planes (oh, the wacky routes we fly to save a dime!), and starving. We settled for the chain restaurant within walking distance of our motel.

Our handsome young waiter, with the fast-talking, Yankee ways, was unexpected in this most Southern of southern towns. And much too much for a couple of fagged out seniors. Mr. Razzle-dazzle, high energy, hard sell. I hate that even when I'm at my best. He was Adam and he would be HELPING US OUT!  He moved like Tony Manero headed onto the dance floor on Saturday night. I wondered if he was hopped up on something or just manic.

Of course, we should know that the bottle was a better deal than the glass and the premium wines were so far superior to the cheap ones that he hated to even discuss them with us. We could do this or that or some other unintelligible thing...But, hey, it was obvious that the choice was hard. He'd make it easy for me; let's start with White or Red!  I quietly and wryly told him we'd start with the crappy Blackstone Pinot Grigio, for me only, thanks...and clamped my mouth in a way that spelled STFU, Adam.

And he did, briefly. He brought the wine and tea and water with barely a beat in his step and left us alone for a few minutes. We hardly noticed how much time had passed, because we were past tired and into punchy. I think we jointly analyzed America's entire problem, and from a unique perspective--which I can no longer remember, but it was sublime.

And then Adam was back, empty-handed. He squatted and rested his elbows on the edge of our table in a way that said, "Now that we've become so close...," and informed us that he 'd screwed up with our order, had failed to push some button or something and our food would be up as soon as humanly possible and he was abjectly sorry. And, somehow, he mentioned a son. And that lots of regular "guests" asked for him when they came in. He offered us free salads and slipped away.

DH was waxing a tad sarcastic by this time, mugging to me, comically annoyed and impatient, blood sugar bottoming out. I was laughing at him, promising that I would personally ask for Adam each and every time we returned to his restaurant and we WOULD return, since it was right next to our motel. And the food came. It was surprisingly good. We felt much better. And Adam refilled DH's tea glass after each sip.

When we were ready for our check and feeling so much more human, thank you, and the place was clearing out for the night, Adam settled in for some serious talk. He asked where we were from, heard our standard answer, "We're from the Air Force, originally." Adam said he'd once had no respect for the Air Force, buncha pampered wusses, but he'd changed his mind. And then the story that Adam had been waiting all day to tell--the story that, we sensed, so often inserted itself into his days--came tumbling out.

Adam wasn't used to Tennessee. He was an Ohio boy and was only here for a few months to take care of his mother. The girls in the South were hell-bent on getting married from Date Number One and it was freaking him out. He'd taken the wait job just until the end of the month, and then he had to head back home. He had a young son, but was never married. He'd been in Afghanistan and, after 9-11, in Iraq as part of the 10th Mountain Division.

His group was IED'd in Fallujah and combat disabled, having lost at least two-thirds of their number. They were under ambush attack and he was hit twice, one in the chest that his body armor stopped and one upward from his armpit through the shoulder. He found himself trying for the first time to call in an air attack. He asked an A-10 Warthog to drop ordinance within 300 yards of his position, a range the Warthog questioned. When he got agreement and the Mark-82 was dropped, the concussion blew him backwards. The Warthog circled back to use its Gatling gun to pick off the one machine-gun mounted Toyota pick-up that almost got away. Warthog pilots saved his life.

We shook his hand and thanked him for his service. We honor the warriors despite condemning the war. And we'll be asking for Adam's table.

Veterans Week, Part I: The Sunken Road and The Angel of Marye's Heights

Headstone, Civil War Veteran, Fredericksburg, VA

Veterans Day falls in this week. My head is full of America's conflicts, present and past. We are a warrior nation, a fact some of us only regret in the aftermaths of our actions. I have two bits of American history to share that I believe are instructive right now to remind us that America has known harder times than these. There are responses to national stress that are to be avoided at all costs, recourses that were suffered pitifully and should not be forgotten. Reasons to find solutions rather than escalate rhetoric.

One story comes from Fredericksburg, VA, which we visited last week, and the other from near Franklin, TN. (I'll be visiting Franklin this week and will tell that story in a second post).

Fredericksburg, VA: A perfect little college town, walkable and so packed with Revolutionary and Civil War history and livable charm that I was pricing housing...again. We made some beautiful shots of the charm, but Fredericksburg is a town with a job and that's what I want to convey: it works to preserve America's stories so that we may be informed by them, so that we may not repeat them. The story of The Battle of The Sunken Road haunts me.