Obama's Conceit Versus the Reality for Iraqis and U.S. War Veterans

President NerObama used the occasion of his Saturday radio address to practically declare the end of the war in Iraq and to brag about what his administration is doing for U.S. veterans of that war. As with everything else he does, however, Obama's statements are contradicted by reality. In Iraq, 49,000 U.S. troops remain, identified, now, as having an "advise and assist" mission embedded within the Iraqi army and police. This means they will go on combat missions with the Iraqi security forces, and are fully equipped and authorized to "defend" themselves when fired upon. A large contingent of U.S. special forces also remain in the country for counterterrorism missions. Secondly, the Iraqis themselves might have some disagreement that the war is over, and that, as Obama said, Iraq is a sovereign country "free to chart its own course." The level of violence in Iraq remains high, though perhaps not as high as in late 2006, as indicated by the car-bomb attacks this past week that killed some 55 Iraqis. Also, many months after its most recent national election, Iraqi political parties still have failed to form a government, making it difficult for the country to "chart its own course."

What about the other side of the ledger, that of military veterans of that war? Obama went through a laundry list of changes at the Veterans Administration (VA) that his administration has initiated, some of which have been endorsed by veterans service organizations (VSOs). One example is a change in the rules that makes it easier for veterans to file disability claims for post-traumatic stress disorder, PTSD. But anything positive that may have been done at the VA is being sabotaged by the Obama Administration's own economic policies, which means there are no jobs for veterans leaving the service. The most recent Bureau of Labor Statistics weekly unemployment insurance claims report, dated Aug. 26, shows that 2,758 claims were filed by recently discharged veterans. A portion of these are members of the National Guard and the reserves who were returned to inactive status and found that the jobs they had held prior to being activated had disappeared, either because the businesses they had worked for had downsized or had gone out of business completely.

As has already been documented in the briefing of Aug. 26, there are job training programs for veterans, such as the "Helmets to Hard Hats" of the construction trades unions, but they aren't much good when there are no jobs to place them in. So, veterans are leaving the service to go into an economy that can give them few, if any, jobs. Many of them are coming out with mental health issues as a result of the stresses they experienced in the service, which makes it even harder for them to cope with the collapsed economy, which can then lead to a spiral of substance abuse, domestic violence, encounters with the criminal justice system, homelessness, and in the most extreme cases, suicide and murder.

NAWAPA is the only way to address the difficulties veterans now face. Lyndon LaRouche said this week: "Bring in the Army Corps of Engineers and make a priority of employing veterans coming out of military service — absorb them first, with the highest priority. They performed honorable military service. We need them to constitute an inactive military reserve, dedicated to this kind of project under the Army Corps of Engineers." One veterans' advocate briefed on NAWAPA, this week, and LaRouche's initiative to use it to absorb veterans coming out of the service said "That sounds like a really good idea," and agreed that by giving veterans such a mission-oriented perspective, that would go a long way towards mitigating all of the difficulties they now face.