Veterans’ Issues Aren’t Just for Veterans
How we treat those who have served is a reflection of who we are as a country.
IN JULY, I RETIRED FROM THE AIR FORCE, ending twenty years of service. My days of combat with the Taliban and associated terrorist groups were over; my days of combat with the Department of Veterans Affairs had begun. The way veterans are treated in America is not only a moral abomination but a rotting sore in the body politic. It’s easy to reduce the problems America’s veterans face to statistics (which are alarming). But now I’ve experienced them myself.
A few days after my retirement, the VA rated me 100 percent permanently and totally disabled due to traumatic brain injuries, post-traumatic stress disorder, vertigo, and other ailments accrued during my four years in Iraq and Afghanistan.
My family celebrated this news. Not only do I receive an additional $4,000 per month, but I also don’t pay property taxes or taxes on my pension or disability payments, and my dependents’ in-state tuition at most public colleges is heavily reduced if not waived. With my pension and disability rating, I was set to live a comfortable lifestyle, allowing me the time to write and reflect on the past twenty years.
But before that, I knew I needed immediate mental health treatment. I was diagnosed with PTSD in 2008 and spent the next sixteen years in and out of treatment across the globe—while also repeatedly re-traumatizing myself in the service of the country. Some of my therapists were great, but many were not. Military mental health care professionals are stretched thin. Wait times can be very long, even for active-duty service members.
The VA’s Solid Start program was supposed to help me navigate the department’s byzantine healthcare system. It did not live up to its name—somehow the VA managed to list me as a single without children.
While that error was being fixed, I decided to cold-call the Kansas City VA Mental Health Clinic for an appointment. I waited three hours on the phone just to be told that I’d need to wait three months for a mental health appointment. I told the patient, respectful lady on the other end that I had voluntarily admitted myself into an in-patient program less than a year ago and that I have a history of flashbacks and hallucinations. It didn’t make a difference.
I figured I could make it three months. I was wrong.
BY MID-SEPTEMBER, I was having flashbacks more regularly. I struggled to connect with my autistic daughter. Even simple tasks like changing her diaper or placing her in a car seat triggered vivid, disturbing memories from Iraq and Afghanistan. The anniversaries of the fall of Afghanistan, September 11th, and the fall of a beloved comrade resurrected old nightmares. But I was only a few weeks away from my first appointment. So I gritted my teeth and tried to muscle through.
In mid-September, I was working out in a park in well-to-do part of town when I had a flashback. Something about my workout routine, my appearance, or my demeanor must have freaked someone out, because someone called the police. I explained to the officers that I’m a veteran and that I was having a flashback and asked them to take me home. Instead, they involuntarily admitted me to a state mental hospital. I asked to be transferred to a VA hospital, but the VA refused: They only take voluntarily admitted patients.
Let that sink in for a minute. A 100-percent permanently and totally disabled combat veteran was denied admittance to a VA mental hospital in his time of need.
Because of the VA’s refusal, I spent four days in a state mental hospital filled with meth addicts, homeless people, people suffering from deep psychosis, and, of course, violent felons. I had no shoes. I had no friends around. I had just two hours outside all week.
Luckily, I made it through to discharge without incident. But that episode ended my marriage, and now I join the long line of other vets with families destroyed by war and the neglect of the system that promised to care for them.
LAST WEEK, I WENT TO VISIT another family damaged by war. The mother of Capt. Jesse Melton III, whom the Taliban killed in September 2008, had read a tribute I wrote to her son and reached out.
I felt at ease as I pulled up to the house. I had met with two other Gold Star families before, so I knew how healing the experience would be. First, I met Jesse’s father, a Jamaican immigrant. I talked a bit about my life and how I met his son. As we talked, Donald Trump’s electoral victory from a couple days before inevitably came up.
“Look, I’m an independent,” explained Jesse’s father. “But what happened at Abbey Gate was not good and it didn’t need to happen. He [Biden] could’ve done something about that.”
Who can blame Jesse’s father (his last name is different) for being a single-issue voter? Families like Jesse’s remember Afghanistan. Their sons were killed fighting for a free Afghanistan. But no one talks about it, like the worst day of their lives is some kind of national taboo. I know a little of what that feels like.
Finally, Jesse’s mom came home from the Gold Star mother event she had been attending. When she saw my face, she elated, “Hallelujah, praise God.” Nobody has ever been that elated to see me in my entire life—especially in the park where I liked to work out. We embraced in pure joy and love.
We spoke about her son and how I knew him. We cried a little, and we remembered Jesse together. She told me about her daughter, who deployed to Afghanistan as a civilian following a stint in the Army so she could “continue Jesse’s mission in Afghanistan.”
That was the thing about Jesse. He believed in the mission. Many of us, especially those who spilled blood and partnered with Afghans, thought it was worth it.
“God bless you,” she said repeatedly. “God is good.”
WHILE WE ONLY SPOKE FOR AN HOUR, it was one of the most rewarding moments of my life. Despite all that has happened to her, she still loves this country deeply. She maintains a deep faith in America and its people.
I have struggled to maintain my faith in America or God. The Global War on Terrorism generation deployed more often and fought longer than any group since Vietnam. And like Vietnam, our wars ended in retreat, abandonment, and shame. As in the 1970s, we face an overworked and overstretched VA that is consistently failing our veterans. Like that earlier generation, we return home to a populace largely ignorant of war.
The GWOT generation is lucky in one sense—we were not disparaged upon our homecoming like the Vietnam generation was. But we face unique struggles. It’s not just the VA; it’s regular run-ins with law enforcement that end up in detention, incarceration, and sometimes death. Vietnam defined an entire generation of Americans, both civilians and veterans alike; the GWOT didn’t represent anything for anyone who didn’t fight in it.
Nearly 44 veterans a day commit suicide, a marked increase since the end of the Afghan war. That is not a coincidence. While both political parties have tried to forget how the disastrous abandonment of Afghanistan came about, America’s combat veterans, especially those who served with or adjacent to the special forces, did not.
What we gave up in the Doha Agreement matters. What happened at Abbey Gate matters. What is happening today to Afghan women matters. It is causing untold damage to a generation of American combat veterans who lost parts of their bodies, minds, and souls toiling in a distant land for a country that primarily forgot about them.
The country has rarely been more divided, nor our public life more acrimonious. For those looking for a way to “bind up the nation’s wounds,” start by caring “for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and orphan.” Let’s reestablish trust by keeping our word to our veterans. We don’t just owe it to those who served and their families; we owe it to ourselves as a country.
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