No to war; Yes to needs of vets!

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Clinton proposed a World Bank economic starvation plan on Haiti’s poor in exchange for returning its deposed elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, accompanied by a U.S.-led UN military occupation. Aristide accepted the Before Aristide’s return, on Oct. 15, 1994, Clinton had increased a U.S. naval blockade around Haiti to intercept refugees in international waters fleeing a military junta, violating U.S. and international asylum law. In campaign speeches, Clinton called his predecessor, Bush I, “racist”

Clinton’s U.S./UN military occupation was reinforced in 2004 by Bush II’s support of yet another CIA-backed coup against Aristide by military and paramilitary thugs. In 2010, it was cynically reinforced yet again by President Barack Obama in the immediate earthquake aftermath, dispatching 20,000 U.S. troops bristling with weapons. It The failure of aid from the imperialist countries reflects the pro-corporate, neoliberal strategy of the major donors, and not merely poor planning. This is a direct result of the anarchy of a privatized relief, which seeks to generate corporate profits, as well as generating the competition Haiti’s misery cries out for a socialist revolution. Haiti needs its own workers’ party—apart from the corrupt Martelly elite and the middle-class misleadership of Aris­ tide’s “Lavalas” movement or its remnants. A genuine workers’ movement, with Haiti’s peasant class as allies, can sweep away corruption, poverty, and imperialism. n American socialists, in the tradition of the great Eugene V. Debs, oppose wars fought to advance the corporate and fi­ nancial agenda of the American ruling capitalist class. That’s all of them since the last just war—the Civil War that eliminated slavery.

But while we object to the way they are used, we don’t view the ranks of the armed forces as part of our class enemy. They are mainly sons and daughters of the working class. In past wars they were mostly drafted. Today they are all volun­ teers.

They sign up for various reasons. In tough economic times, many young people are attracted by the security of “three hots and a cot” while earning the prospect of financial assistance for edu­ cation. Some immigrants, and children of undocumented immigrants, volunteer in return for vague promises of citizenship as a reward.

But there was also a palpable surge of patriotic outrage after the 9-11 attacks that Washington blamed on the govern­ ment of Afghanistan. Later, many initially volunteered to stop Iraq’s Saddam Hus­ sein from using “weapons of mass de­ struction.” Both of these claims leading to two bloody wars, as well as attacks on civil liberties at home and squander­ ing trillions of dollars, have since been proved to be lies.

Socialists have centered our opposi­ tion on the deceitful policy of the poli­ ticians and brass hats—not the ranks of the military who think they are serv­ ing their country. Because we genuinely care about these sisters and brothers, we try to get them out of harm’s way by demanding they all be brought home now—where they belong. And we fur­ ther demand that society accept respon­ sibility for assisting those re-entering civilian life, who did what they perceived to be their duty.

After World War II, the GI Bill did a good job in not only assuring health care for returning vets but also education and even loan guarantees for buying a house. These benefits played a crucial role in avoiding a return to economic depres­ sion as the war-time mobilization wound down.

Vietnam vets did not fare as well. For decades, the military resisted recogniz­ ing environmental disabilities caused by practices such as the widespread use of Agent Orange defoliants. And little was done to help the many who became ad­ ... Haiti gala dicted to drugs and alcohol “in country.”

Vets today are having a tougher time yet. The politicians and many in the me­ dia call them heros. But these heros have a much higher unemployment rate than the general population—over 20 percent for the 18-24 age group, 9.5 percent for 24-35. Ten percent of those who have jobs earn less than $10 an hour. On any given night, about 60,000 vets are home­ less and 140,000 are incarcerated.

Advances in medical science have greatly lowered fatality rates among wounded and injured troops on the bat­ tlefield. Saving lives is a good thing, but one result is many more being left with varying degrees of debilitation that will require medical attention for life. Many of the 51,000 wounded in Iraq and Af­ ghanistan fall into that category.

In addition to these physical wounds, hundreds of thousands more suffer from psychological afflictions such as PTSD. Active-duty soldiers with such disorders, which can lead to behavioral problems even in initial stages of treatment, are often given bad-conduct dishonorable discharges to deny them any VA benefits. There’s been little public attention given to this outrage.

As the VA faced record numbers need­ ing their health services, bureaucrats issued directives that sounded great in press releases but were unrealizable in the real world. One was a commitment that no first-time patient needing to see a doctor would have to wait more than two weeks for an appointment—an im­ possible objective with present resourc­ es. Some local administrators started cooking the books to hide normal waits of as long as four months.

When CNN broke the story about this scandal in May, there was loud reaction in Congress. But it wasn’t to provide ur­ gently needed resources for the VA to do their job. First was a proposal to make it easier for the top bureaucrats to fire subordinates. This fits into their broader blame-the-worker campaign, which is also being used to deny tenure to “bad” teachers. French socialist But the main reason we are finally hearing about some chronic problems in veterans’ health care is that privateers of both parties see recent scandals in re­ cord keeping as an opportunity to shift VA patients and tax-payer subsidies to the private sector. Those of us who must deal with for-profit care providers would conclude that if what we have would be an upgrade, the VA system must be rot­ ten to the core.

The truth is that the VA system is the best performing and most cost-efficient component of the shameful general state of health care in the USA. A recent article in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine revealed, “Beyond access to care, health system performance should be evaluated on the basis of health out­ comes, the quality and safety of the care delivered, patient satisfaction, and costs.

“In many of these domains, the VA has kept pace with or surpassed private-sec­ tor health systems. A 2010 systematic review comparing the quality of care in VA and non-VA settings found that the VA generally performed better on qual­ ity measures for medical conditions (e.g., blood-pressure control and diabetes management).”

The VA held their own in interventional procedures compared to the much more costly private sector. But what about pa­ tient satisfaction?

“On a 2013 patient survey, the Ameri­ can Customer Satisfaction Index, VA health care earned overall satisfaction indexes of 84 (out of 100) for inpatient services and 82 for outpatient care, while the U.S. hospital industry scored 80 and 83 in those categories, respec­ tively. When asked how likely they would be to return to a VA medical center for outpatient care, veterans responded with a score of 95 out of 100, indicating strong likelihood of return for care.”

The core problem with VA services is that their resources have not kept pace with the growing numbers they must serve. The indicated solution is to pro­ vide the VA with the resources they need—not to dump Vets into a private sector that has the worst outcome/cost performance record of any industrial­ ized country.

This is not just a veterans’ problem. It is a solidarity issue for the working class, and the workers’ movement should be their advocate. n Braihim Rais / ibrahim-rais.blogspot.com