During the past year, veterans’ issues were all over the media—and often the news was grim. In February the Walter Reed hospital scandal broke, with revelations about decrepit housing and substandard care. Next came a series of reports on Iraq War data: we learned that the Army suicide rate had reached a 26-year high in 2006; that there’d been 4,698 desertions during the 2007 fiscal year, an 80 percent increase since 2003; that the number of Iraq vets diagnosed with mental-health issues triples during their first six months at home. I followed these stories with a strange sense of relief. For too long, people seemed to think veterans came home and simply melted back into society. Now vet issues were finally getting attention—even if it took bad news to make it happen.
When I started my blog this year, I wondered if there would be enough news about veterans to get me through one day. I couldn’t have been more wrong. There we were in the rhetoric of politicians, in countless newspaper features, even on reality TV. For the blog, I’ve made an effort to examine not only the challenges that my fellow veterans face but also their accomplishments. As one Wall Street Journal columnist wrote, “The media struggles in good faith to respect our troops, but too often it merely pities them.”
Stories like the Walter Reed scandal can invite this kind of pity and overshadow the fact that most of us are immensely proud of our service. A single tour in Iraq or Afghanistan can define a person’s entire life; collectively, our experiences will echo for decades. If 2007 was the year when veterans’ issues entered the public’s consciousness, we need to make sure they don’t go away in 2008.
title: “Meet The New Generation Of War Veterans” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-18” author: “John Lower”
I grew up in an era when war veterans were the aging men at Memorial Day parades wearing triangular hats. It never crossed my mind that a vet might someday be a kid like me. If it had never crossed yours, either, this year probably changed all that. At my graduate school in New York, I can count at least five classmates who know an Iraq War veteran firsthand—and that’s just one class, in one school. More than 1 million veterans have returned from Iraq and Afghanistan, lifting our collective profile by the sheer weight of our numbers.
During the past year, veterans’ issues were all over the media—and often the news was grim. In February the Walter Reed hospital scandal broke, with revelations about decrepit housing and substandard care. Next came a series of reports on Iraq War data: we learned that the Army suicide rate had reached a 26-year high in 2006; that there’d been 4,698 desertions during the 2007 fiscal year, an 80 percent increase since 2003; that the number of Iraq vets diagnosed with mental-health issues triples during their first six months at home. I followed these stories with a strange sense of relief. For too long, people seemed to think veterans came home and simply melted back into society. Now vet issues were finally getting attention—even if it took bad news to make it happen.
When I started my blog this year, I wondered if there would be enough news about veterans to get me through one day. I couldn’t have been more wrong. There we were in the rhetoric of politicians, in countless newspaper features, even on reality TV. For the blog, I’ve made an effort to examine not only the challenges that my fellow veterans face but also their accomplishments. As one Wall Street Journal columnist wrote, “The media struggles in good faith to respect our troops, but too often it merely pities them.”
Stories like the Walter Reed scandal can invite this kind of pity and overshadow the fact that most of us are immensely proud of our service. A single tour in Iraq or Afghanistan can define a person’s entire life; collectively, our experiences will echo for decades. If 2007 was the year when veterans’ issues entered the public’s consciousness, we need to make sure they don’t go away in 2008.
