A depressing story on the rise of homelessness among veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns in today's New York Times.
According to the Veterans's Affairs Department, over 400 vets have turned up in homeless shelters. These are the numbers of people who have gone looking for help; God knows how many are suffering in silence.
11% of these veterans are women, the highest number in U.S. history. 40% of them were sexually assaulted by male soldiers overseas.
All these numbers are unusual, experts claim. Homelessness is not uncommon among veterans of foreign wars, but the downward spiral usually takes awhile. These days, it's immediate.
They come back to their world, some of them physically battered, most with their psyches turned inside out. Government agencies meant to help them ignore them, put them on waiting lists, let them twist in the wind. Some look for comfort or at least release in crack and meth, but with housing costs so high and their pay so low, it's easy to fall.
Our Beloved President, in an act of caprice, shattered these people's lives. He and his enablers knowingly used bogus claims and fake evidence to lead us into this foreign policy cul-de-sac, knowing but not caring what would happen. People continue to die every day, and hell, maybe the dead are the lucky ones, they won't have to see the continuing indifference of those in power.
Yes, we all say we're tired of this war, but what are we doing. How many seeds must be planted before we reap this terrible harvest, how much blood can we sponge from our hands, how many homeless bodies must we step over?
