This is a four year old girl, gravely injured and orphaned by the war in Iraq. She is an innocent victim of this madness. She had no say in this. Yet here she is, bruised, burned and orphaned. This was done in your name and mine. If a picture is worth a thousand words, this one speaks eloquently for hours.
This woman was caught in the crossfire, and is desperately trying to shield her children from the bullets flying around her. She had no say in this, either. Nor did her children. Is that blood on the child wearing yellow? Was this child, four or five at the most, one of the data points in George Bush's "comma"?
This child did not survive. Did her parents? They had no say in this. This wasn't their idea. They were just living their lives. Do you think her parents, if they survived the attack that took her life, love her any less than we love our children? Someone loved her enough to send her to Paradise with her Binky. Yet we dehumanize these people, that we may kill them.These children are innocent victims. It is traumatic enough for me to see these things in photos; having seen death and destruction, having spent most of my first career in the same room, sometimes in the same helicopter, with death and destruction, and I know first hand what bullets and explosions do to human flesh. I know what a burn victim smells like. I see these photos, and that smell comes back to me and I gag. If you have never seen death, destruction and bloody chaos, yet you cheerlead this fiasco you know nothing of, you and I are not the same species. I have seen and I have smelled what bullets and explosions do to flesh and blood, and I can not abide this.
When I burned out on life-flight missions, I stopped doing them and went into the lab. Our troops do not have that luxury. They are there until their orders say they can come home. They are being held beyond their contract termination dates due to stop-loss policies. They may want to come home, but they can't. Every day they take another mission, and face snipers, IED's, car bombs and suicide bombers. They live in a constant state of heightened arousal and tension. Anxiety is the norm.
We send young men and women off to war, to do unspeakable things in our name. These things they do, mostly without complaint. It is their job and they knew the risks when they took it. It is, after all, an all volunteer force.
That said, we own them something. At the very least, we owe them mental health care when they need it after they witness scenes like these three daily. One in four returning troops will face PTSD, anxiety disorder and panic attacks, and readjustment difficulty. A million troops have rotated through Iraq and Afghanistan in the four years since the Afghan invasion.
Those in need deserve help, but they are not getting it. The Vet Centers that deal with the mental health issues that stem from witnessing things in real life, with your own eyes, every day - are not adequate to meet the needs of the troops needing their services.
Fully 40% of the Vet Centers surveyed have sent clients who need intensive and individualized therapy into group therapy because that is what they have available. In addition, 30% of the Vet Centers report that they are understaffed, and 25% face cutting the services they do offer, and waiting lists for those services. Families are SOL too. 20% have little or not counseling and guidance for the families of returned troops who are suffering from readjustment and anxiety disorders and PTSD.
How can this be happening? If all of the elected officials who voted to authorize force in Iraq were voting to fund veterans programs, we wouldn't have this mess. So something isn't right here. What could it be? I'll tell you what it is...It's hypocricy. It is taking for granted the service of a million men and women. Vote to send them in, but then vote against body armor and funding the VA; and while you are at it cut the funding of the Vet Centers.
Way to support the troops.
