Warriors pay victory’s price

The News Virginian
Published: June 17, 2008

“The living remain’d and suffer’d, the mother suffer’d, And the wife and the child and the nursing comrade suffer’d, And the armies that remain’d suffer’d.”
— Walt Whitman

Quietly, America is inching toward success in Iraq. The number of average monthly U.S. deaths has plummeted, sectarian violence has decreased and the Iraqi government appears steadily more capable of independence. The presidential campaign and economic downturn have eclipsed this. So too has a Pyrrhic truth: One more such victory would utterly undo us.
Beyond arenas political and military are war’s living, soldiers who have escaped the horrors of Baghdad’s dusty streets with breath still in their lungs but without limbs or movement in their legs and their pockets, as well as their hope, as empty as a campaign slogan.
Isaac Stevens, 28, of San Antonio, an Army private first class profiled by The Associated Press, is an example. A recent story describes Stevens as “penniless, in a wheelchair, fending off the sexual advances of another man in a homeless shelter.” Stevens is among scores of injured soldiers living on a fraction of their military pay while waiting as long as a year for disability payments to begin.
Almost 20,000 disabled soldiers have been discharged in the past two fiscal years. Thousands of them might plunge into financial despair while the plodding bureaucracy wades through claims. Typically, a veteran and his or her family see monthly earnings dip from $3,400 to $970, according to the AP. To combat this, the Army is allowing wounded soldiers to collect full pay for up to 90 days after discharge, and additional VA workers have been sent to military posts to expedite claims applications.
But change is too slow in coming for wounded warriors such as Stevens. Ninety days of full pay does not cover the gap of months between salary reductions and the start of disability benefits. A program that originated in Virginia, TurboVet, would streamline the process, which now includes spending 100 days after discharge gathering requisite paperwork to support claims.
Legislation touted by Rep. John J. Hall, D-N.Y., would compel the Department of Veterans Affairs to use compatible computer systems and make criteria more consistent. Hall laments: “A veteran goes and serves and does what the country asks him to do. But when they come back they’re made to jump through these hoops and to wait in line for disability benefits.”
Never have U.S. forces confronted a challenge so complex as Iraq, combating not a singular foreign enemy but a loose yet well-trained band of insurgents whose tactics include free and easy use of civilians as martyrs and who blend seamlessly with locals whose allegiances are meticulously concealed beneath sectarianism’s veil.
While the surge ordered by those far from the reach of roadside bombs and rocket-powered grenades clearly precipitated a shift in U.S. fortunes, the turnabout has been driven by the valor of those waging the fight. Winning where defining objectives has been like quantifying vapors would be an accomplishment unmatched in American military annals.
That men such as Isaac Stevens are left to the cruel fate of destitution is a disgrace of extraordinary proportion. American honor, brilliantly upheld in the streets of Baghdad, Fallujah and Basra, wears a stain at home that will not soon wash away. No victory is worthwhile if it is accompanied by the callous neglect of those who achieved it.