Is PTSD Becoming Just Another Welfare Giveaway to the 47%?
Soldiers who become casualties on the battlefield should be taken care of, including injuries that cause physical and mental impairment. Societies have done so throughout history. The prerequisite has always been a sound body and mind to begin with. A pre-existing physical impairment wouldn’t qualify, nor would a weak mental make-up before entering service.
Veterans in the past expected trauma and mental anguish as part and parcel of being in combat. They all came home to encounter rough transitions from one world to the other. It was part of what war was about. You did your duty and personally absorbed the anguish, which would diminish with time.
True PTSD should be anchored in wartime mental trauma that peers would confirm as being obvious and accurate. Even Marine officer Philip Caputo in A Rumor of War says becoming a blubbering idiot isn’t even enough. You’re supposed to have lots of fear during combat. As Caputo recounts in “Philip Caputo on PTSD and Combat Cowardice,” a tough-love sergeant forced one such casualty to pull himself together, save his personal dignity, and not leave the battlefield with an official mental stain on his record.
PTSD is becoming the welfare sweepstakes of choice for many veterans who welcome a lifetime of disability payments if they can only claim some mental anguish, the same “goes with the turf” conditions that former generations would “grin and bear.” Now cooks and clerks who heard a distant shell burst or saw a dead body from a vehicle feel impaired. You just have to be a good actor and stick to your story.
If everyone who goes “off to war” becomes entitled to a disability payment for mental anguish, then war will become too costly. Isn’t this what the anti-war faction really is pursuing as a goal? Escalating “salaries” is often tied to the same motive. Four-fifths of soldiers in most wars don’t see combat anyway, but are most of the PTSD claims originating from this majority?
Democrats seem to welcome any and all dependency on government because beneficiaries of welfare will always vote to keep the free whatever rolling in. Today we see various branches of the armed forces holding “counseling” sessions about “how to spot PTSD” for those leaving the service. In reality, these sessions are actually teaching many how to fake a PTSD application. Meanwhile, attention to those who really need the help goes unfulfilled.
I agree. The fact is if we want to wage war we can’t be paying people any kind of money unless their injury can be politicized against us. The fact of the matter is wars cost money and every soldier that we have to support because for whatever reason he became incapable of fighting is one fewer soldier we can field. This is an ideological struggle. If we plan to secure the middle east we need those who joined knowing they may suffer some “impairment” from their “service” to go ahead and do what they signed on for, and serve their country. Theres already plenty of soup kitchens and shelters for those who really cant keep their head above water, its not like they are literally starving in the streets. Its not that this was poorly thought out; nobody imagined that those who suffered “trauma” from “combat” would actually seek compensation. Maybe the romans offered veterans land and citizenship but we’re not the romans, we’re americans, and the fact is we have to do what is best for us, right in the here and now. We need to cut the budget down, and we dont need these self rightious stuck up welfare queen “soldiers” with their hands in our pockets, crying about their “trauma” (all faked, btw, before the 80s PTSD wasnt even a thing, we knew it was just shell shock and cowards who had it got shot in the head as they should be) should just go where all the other failures of society go, prison, mental asylums, and homeless shelters. We’ve already poured out our hard earned cash setting up a safety net its not like they are literally dying its not our fault we werent stupid enough to join the fight with them.
I agree that the Democrats want to make another victim class out of veterans, but I completely disagree with this premise that PTSD is sweepstakes for veterans. First off, PTSD probably isn’t the right diagnosis. Sure, for some, but it is just as likely the constant high level of stress faced on deployments as much as any one traumatic event. Soldiers who don’t actually see combat, but amp themselves up for it over and over again. I have known guys whose job was handling remains and the stress of seeing soldiers he knew dead over and over again wore on him. Are there some “fakers”? Sure, someone no doubt has, but not many.
The VA/DoD process seems to be based on the idea that everyone is faking. They only use verifiable metrics, ie if you tell them you are in pain, the don’t care, all they want to know is your range of motion and what you can see on an x-ray. I know guys who can barely walk because of back injuries, but only get a small disability because “you can’t rate pain” and the injury doesn’t change range of motion significantly.
There are many just claims, but then again, there are many that the government awards that is based on pure speculation. Claims that would never hold water in court.
Example, I know a gentleman who is in his 70’s. He was in Vietnam in the 1960’s. Three or four years ago he started complaining of symptoms. 50 years after the fact! And he was not even a combat soldier by a field engineer when he was in Vietnam. You know what the VA did? Awarded him a 90% disability rating. You know what is even crazier? This person works for the federal government as a judge! How the heck does one have a severe mental illness and then the same government let’s him keep his job? What incredibly poor stewards our VA disability raters are! Talk about a ridiculous result! They only act so magnanimously because they are using other people’s money to be generous.
Its just a huge giveaway to a group that includes a hell of a lot of folks who have baloney claims IMHO — baloney claims that are incredibly frequently paid! That said, there is no doubt that a lot of these people have righteous claims, but come on! Going back 50 years! How totally absurd. I can just see it now. Old vet gets himself worked up intentionally dwelling on past memories, goes into the shrink’s office and gets himself worked up and sheds a few tears. Then boom, the VA makes a decision that no private sector business would make and says that the vet did enough to connect the dots. And this kink of nonsense happens all the time! As I sit here and look at my tax bill — including the AMT and all the deductions and exemptions I lose because of my upper middle class income level, and I cannot help but think — this is why the federal government is murdering me with taxes. It spends money like a drunken sailor in some ways! Gives this PTSD disability way like its candy. It needs much of its money to pay speculative claims that amount to no more than a giveaway to special interest groups. And people wonder why we are $17.4 trillion dollars in debt as a nation.
Wish more people would write about this issue. I know far more people scamming the system then have legitimate cause. How can a person make it through there adult life then when they are in there 50s on up and have worked with no issues suddenly claim this and that. I know numerous baby boomers that haven’t saved a dime for retirement and then though talking to friends learned to con system it’s like they hit the lottery.
I know there are veterans that need a lot of help, but I also know that there are large percentages that are just cons.
Thanks, Ken. It seems that the newly-minted protected status of veterans means that every person who dons a uniform is automatically a hero (this kind of moral equivalency suggests that no one is really a hero)–even fakers and cowards, who I hope are the only ones that will be driven away and disquieted when challenged by anything I say.
The left has been busy making veterans into down-and-out anti-heroes: hapless losers who head right to homeless shelters and the welfare office. Lots of lucrative “social service” workers seem eager to steer them away from self-reliance toward a diminished sense of themselves–in order to keep their agencies afloat.
This is unfair to most veterans, like myself, who answered the call of duty and patriotism, not expecting great rewards from society during service or after release.
I agree Brad. You took on a tough topic here that, in our whiney culture, was sure to earn you some ire. Some groups are “off limits” in our politically correct environment, and the Left has been eager to co-opt veterans to use as a tool to bludgeon conservatives, just as they have other groups in the past.
We know liberals have long loathed the military and the poor saps (their opinion) who stupidly serve in it. They have wised up since Vietnam, though, and most of them are careful to cloak their loathing in flowery language (“I support the troops, but…”) and they are, as they have done with minorities in recent years, eager to appropriate military personnel and veterans as props for their agenda. We play into their agenda when we blindly go along with their faux “concern” for veterans.
I served for 10 years, and during that time I saw courageous people who put up with great hardship in the service of their country (more than I did), and I also saw some people who whined a lot and were always first in line when there were handouts or a sympathetic hand to pat them on the back. Like every segment of society, the military has great people, good people, and some who are looking for others to carry the weight for them.
The more society encourages an atmosphere of victimhood and taxpayer-funded consolation, the more that same attitude is going to unfortunately also creep into the military community. I think that is the point Brad was trying to make.
Good insights, Bob. The ire will be greater if the “opposition” has been given a free ride without being challenged at all. I’m sure the Temperance Union ladies who marched into the first all-male bars were vilified with any false charges that came to mind. The same would happen if we went into a gay bar quoting scripture today.
At this point there’s absolutely no dialogue possible if counter-evidence has never been broached for consideration.
You might want to pick different targets than those suffering with shell-shock (I hate calling it PTSD). I know many I served with in deployments that snapped mentally. Actually being involved in the combat or seeing the bodies is not the only condition that causes shell-shock in deployments. You’re backing an issue that is likely to drive push some veterans away from anything you say…