Posted on 01/19/2008 11:50:02 AM PST by Responsibility2nd
I believe it takes a man of strong moral character who is willing to face deadly risks.
And if his momma and daddy failed to raise him right.... his chances ain't so good.
Oh, I think it’s far more than that. That’s too easy an out.
I won’t say that the parents of these soldiers didn’t “raise them right.” If they hadn’t, would the men have joined the military? Surely for their sacrifice we owe them more than libel against their families.
We ask these men to live with incredible stress for months on end, perform terrible acts, then when they come home after a job well done, we abandon them. Is it any wonder that some have problems adjusting to civilian life?
DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE
DEPARTMENT of EDUCATION
TROOPS TO TEACHERS
PROGRAM OVERVIEW
http://www.dantes.doded.mil/dantes_web/troopstoteachers/overview.asp?Flag=True
Hire A Hero (Ollie North)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1606606/posts
Must read.
OK, the lib media wins. Let’s just disband the Armed Forces.
No more homeless people, no more murders, no more drug problems, no more substandard VA hospitals, no more United States of America.
Nobody comes back from war the same as before they went. Those who adjust the best simply put the past behind them and refuse to think about it. As some wiser person once put it, the chasm between war and normal life is wider than the Grand Canyon, and not to be crossed. I interpret that to mean that one should leave the war with the war, and not take it home with you. Probably no one is capable of doing that 100% of the time, but those who adjust best do it more than others.
Yup. Here we go again. Just like after Vietnam.
Don’t worry. It will all disappear just as soon as a Rat rolls into the White House. Until the next GOP president....
Some join to get away from a toxic family.
I don’t know, but when your Mom sends you vodka in Scope bottles....
I’m just saying.
I tend to be leery of press accounts. Are these people actually veterans - or simply people looking for a handout? The fact is that you can get better treatment if you claim to be a veteran, whether you are one or not. A veteran speaks out:
(Quote)
In recent years, I have been approached on the street by those claiming to be “homeless veterans.” I questioned all and not even one ever appeared legit.
With the exception of that feminist Gloria at her friend Jane’s press conference, these were the only people who became hostile when challenged. I look at John Kerry and his cohorts from the VVAW and I see the birthplace of the “poor Vietnam Veteran” myth in the public’s eye. Millions of honorable veterans and the media tries to make that ragtag bunch of bums into “us”? Not on my watch, Dan and Walter. Those are your veterans, not mine! They are the genesis of every bad impression of Vietnam Veterans. They started the myth, along with the media left, that we were all dope addicts and most of us ended up in prison. It was this crew of real and imaginary veterans, along with the left handed media who hate the military, which created the myth of the whining veteran and they are doing their best to do it to a new generation of American warriors. They had no military pride in their day and have not one ounce of national pride today. They are not us and never were.
We veterans have made our voices heard on everything from POWs left behind to the terrible consequences from the use of chemicals in our war. We kept John Kerry and his VVAW “band of brothers” out of the White House. But, even the VA seems intent on tagging us, rather than treating us. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) has become almost a buzz word for veterans of any war. I do not begrudge anyone treatment, but I am offended by the myth that none of us could cope with the rigors of combat and it’s aftermath. As a former POW, the first words out of the VA Rep’s mouth were “Of course, you will get compensated for PTSD.” My response? “Just rate me on the bullets and shrapnel.” I want them to treat that quiet vet in the corner, who never whines, but dreams terrible things at night. Then I want them to go down to the shopping mall and snatch up that camouflage-wearing goon, bothering the old ladies and find out if he ever actually went to war.
(Unquote)
O’Reilly this week pretty much exposed these stories as fraud along with the stories that Iraq War veterans were in high number coming back to America and committing murders. Not true. Most homeless people are that way due to addictions to alcohol or drugs.
LIFE is TOUGH.....and some people choose to handle it better than others....I would imagine a strong faith and the support of a Church family would help.....
The numbers don’t add up - 336,000 veterans are supposedly homeless, according to career homeless advocates. How did they identify these people as veterans? Let’s say 500,000 troops have cycled through Iraq. Is it reasonable to say the 336,000 of these troops is homeless, considering that perhaps half of them are still serving? These numbers are nuts.
This is so much crap. I saw CNN do a story on homeless vets, and the vet they interviewed was one that had been kicked out of my unit (after a court-martial) for beating his wife on more than one ocassion. He never left the states, and got an other than honorable discharge.
I’ll bet the number of honorably discharged veterans in homeless shelters is next to zero.
I think its fair to say we could do a whole lot better in our treatment of veterans. I don’t give a crap who is in the White House. “Thanks for you service, now shut up and go away” doesn’t quite cut it.
I’ll allow as how there probably are some genuine vets who genuinely get in a bad place. That said, I have the gut feeling that there are a lot more homeless people saying they’re vets than there are actual homeless vets.
These estimates of homeless vets we've been hearing from years from the homeless advocacy industry are completely made-up numbers. The stories we are seeing now and saw so often after the Vietnam War are always long, anecdotal descriptions of a few individuals supported by wildly inflated estimates of homelessness by a homeless advocacy organization.
During the Reagan years, homeless advocates claimed that two to three million Americans were homeless - one in every 100 people.
For a thorough debunking of the homeless Vietnam Vet myth, see B.J. Burkett's book "Stolen Valor" chapter 14, "An Army on the Streets." He found that homeless advocates and the MSM vastly overestimated the number of homeless veterans on the basis of no hard evidence, and that in reality the more rigorous studies found that Vietnam vets had a LOWER unemployment rate than their peers who didn't serve in the military, making them LESS likely to be homeless. Burkett documents the point that many of the homeless who claimed to be veterans in fact were not, and that homeless advocates do not check the military records of these often mentally-ill people to see if they really are veterans.
The MSM's tried-and-true template of the crazy, alcoholic, homeless veteran.
Thank you both for crunching the numbers.
But you must be mistaken. Surely the MSM would not overstate and manipulate the facts now whoule they?
>>>>>>>>>sarc off...........
Good seeing heavy skepticism in this thread...
Squidly,
your analysis is spot on....
“the chasm between war and normal life is wider than the Grand Canyon, and not to be crossed. I interpret that to mean that one should leave the war with the war, and not take it home with you.”
Similarly....
the chasm between your job and normal life is wider than the Grand Canyon, and not to be crossed. I interpret that to mean that one should leave your job at work, and not take it home with you.
Both cases will make for a much more pleasant ‘family life’, if family life is what is most important to you. Conversely, failed families sometimes can point back to the inability to leave those ‘situations’ behind when exiting one world and entering another. Having ‘tried both and got the t-shirt’, it’s not clear to me which is easier...doing it every day (work) or all at once (war).
Now for my 2 cents.....I maintain that I woulda been a lot happier without Walter Cronkite/Dan Rather’s 2 cents! And the author sure sounds a lot like Dan Rather to me....just sayin’.
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