My Errant Mind

Really, it is getting old, the constant stream of horrible conditions being revealed that our veterans returning from the Middle East are enduring. The latest video to publicize the issue shows the terrible conditions those fighting our wars are forced to live in…while defense contractors and certain politicians get rich off the wars.

Officers live separate from enlisted soldiers, mind you. But, what kind of leader lives in comfort at home while those soldiers that officer is responsible for live in squalor as bad or worse than the conditions his or her soldiers endured during the war? No leader worth a damn by any measure of the definition.

It is time for Majors, Colonels, Generals, the Secretary of the Army and the Secretary of Defense to be held accountable and for people to start losing their rank and jobs. People put in positions of trust and authority are showing they have no responsibility to the men and women we send to fight on our behalf. It is time to see the dismissal of field grade officers all the way up the chain of command, including the commanders of the 82nd Airborne Division and the XVIII Airborne Corps, FORSCOM and higher.

I’m a former infantryman myself, and find this beyond insulting to our soldiers. Infantrymen are famous for enduring harsh conditions and making things happen, getting things done, for not whining about such things as living in a hole scooped out of the sand for months, or slogging through jungles, or for patrolling the side of snowy mountains when it is -20 to -30 below. Infantrymen are used to the poorest conditions while those in other units have air conditioning and other creature comforts.

But the things shown in that video are an outrage.

Are those veterans to have survived war (often multiple tours) only to come home and fall ill because the Department of Defense is too damned cheap to provide them decent living conditions? Are they going to have to endure lung infections, lead poisoning, bacterial and fungal infections at home in America after having endured incredible hardships abroad fighting for those same stingy, cheap SOB’s leading this country?

What are Company Commanders and Platoon leaders doing, accepting this? Why aren’t they speaking out? Why aren’t Battalion Commanders raising hell about this? The officer corp is showing an incredible lack of balls and leadership on this. Is this how they think of and treat the soldiers they led in battle?

It is time to see heads roll. This is not an isolated incident, but one example of a long string of incompetent and gross miscarriages of decency in the military. First veterans were enduring terrible conditions at Walter Reed hospital. Next, they are being starved in Iraq. Now, they are living among mold, fungus, rust, peeling lead paint and shit.

OK, it has been more than a year has passed since the Walter Reed debacle, and yet nothing has changed. The Pentagon is doing absolutely nothing about this sort of thing which is endemic in the military.

Write your representative in Congress and voice your outrage at this. Better yet, write the President in the White House and let him know what a pathetic excuse of a human being he is (and a piss-poor Commander in Chief) for sending our soldiers to fight and risk their lives for this country and making them have to come home to these despicable conditions.

The sad thing is that right now, Company Commanders, First Sergeants, and Sergeant Majors are probably chewing soldiers’ asses, making them jump through hoops to slap paint on stuff, making them clean and repair buildings that should have been already in good shape for returning soldiers who have just endured the horrors of war—to cover up and prevent further examples from making their way into the public eye.

It is time to see those in high places lose their jobs and rank. When you vacate your leadership and responsibility you don’t deserve the rank, pay, or trappings of that office or rank.

The Global What the Hell on Terror is showing everything that is ugliest about America, and unfortunately, everything that is embarrassing us around the world is the fault of piss-poor leaders in the military officer corp, among our politicians, and in the greed of the military-industrial complex.

These days, our President, our Congress, our Generals and Admirals, our intelligence agencies, and our corporations are an embarrassment to everything it means to be American.