Just In Time For Christmas--Homeless Iraq War Vets

It’s the Christmas season and we are all looking forward to visiting family and friends during the holidays. Many Americans spend a good deal of their time and money in an effort to help the less fortunate citizens of our great nation, especially at this time of the year. As a result, I know I’m walking a fine line with this post, but I’m going to do it anyway and try to not come across as too “insensitive.”

This article in the Washington Times under the headline “Homeless Iraq Vets Showing Up At Shelters” is complete crappolla and just has to be debunked by an expert debunker like myself. The author attempts to hang a liberal dose of guilt on us over the plight of “homeless Iraq war veterans” while at the same time taking a few cheep shots at the military in general and the Iraq war effort specifically. I’m not going to let them get away with it.

“Washington, DC, Dec. 7 (UPI) -- U.S. veterans from the war in Iraq are beginning to show up at homeless shelters around the country, and advocates fear they are the leading edge of a new generation of homeless vets not seen since the Vietnam era.”

First things first. I’ve had it up to my eyeballs with professional “advocates” touting the poor condition and impending doom of every pitiful form of humanity from illegal Mexican immigrant fruit pickers to one-armed Polish wallpaper hangers. These “advocates” come to us with pious expressions of compassion, demanding our hard earned tax money or other financial support, all the time attempting to cover the fact that they themselves are making a tidy living on the payroll of one or more “advocacy” organizations that pay for everything from their memberships in private country clubs to the license tag on their new Volvo or Saab.

Like the race warlords Al Sharpton and Jessie Jackson, these mostly self-proclaimed “advocates” have a vested personal interest in maintaining the continued suffering of their specific repressed demographic of humanity while at the same time lamenting their conditions. According to the “advocates,” the number of their victims is always growing as their conditions are continuing to deteriorate. If everyone were actually successfully relieved of their often self-imposed suffering, these “advocates” would find themselves out of a job and would have to actually go out and work for a living rather than chasing microphones and TV cameras all day.

THEY CERTAINLY CAN’T LET THAT HAPPEN!

Now, as to the specifics of this latest “news” item…Buried 25 paragraphs down in the story is this little tidbit of information...

“Interviews and visits to homeless shelters around the Unites States show the number of homeless veterans from Iraq or Afghanistan so far is limited. Of the last 7,500 homeless veterans served by the VA, 50 had served in Iraq.”

Think about these numbers for a minute while I get my calculator…let’s see…50 divided by 7,500, that equals 0.006667. For the non-engineers or non-math majors out there, that’s two thirds of one percent. Hardly an imposing trend! I suspect that if they did another survey next week, the number of homeless Iraq vets could easily rise or fall by 50 percent and still not indicate anything to start a new charity category over.

"When we already have people from Iraq on the streets, my God," said Linda Boone, executive director of the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans. "I have talked to enough (shelters) to know we are getting them. It is happening and this nation is not prepared for that."

I’ve got news for The National Coalition for Homeless Veterans and Ms. Boone, if you go out and look at 100,000 average people in the US population over a two year period, I suspect that you will find at least 50 people who’s life choices and personal actions result in them being described as “homeless” for a short period of time. Most people who aren’t raging alcoholics, drug addicts, or legally insane also manage to be homeless by the government’s so called “official definition” and still not have to sleep in a doorway or eat out of the McDonald’s dumpster. They do this by sleeping on a friend’s couch, moving back home with Mama, or they go to an existing shelter while they get their act together.

UPI’s star “homeless vet” has to this to say about how he became homeless:

“I drove off in my truck. I packed my stuff. I lived out of my truck for a while," Seabees Petty Officer Luis Arellano, 34, said in a telephone interview from a homeless shelter near March Air Force Base in California run by US Vets, the largest organization in the country dedicated to helping homeless veterans.

"Arellano said he lived out of his truck on and off for three months after returning from Iraq in September 2003. "One day you have a home and the next day you are on the streets," he said."

"A gunner's mate for 16 years, Arellano said he adjusted after serving in the first Gulf War. But after returning from Iraq, depression drove him to leave his job at the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. He got divorced.”

Read the entire article and then help me see if I have this situation straight in my mind. After spending 16 years in the Navy, Mr. Arellano is honorably discharged while recovering from a shrapnel wound to his left thumb. He returns home to his civilian life and wife and proceeds to get a divorce, pack his truck, and move away.

I’d like to ask Luis these questions. “Did your wife suddenly start beating you?” “Did she have another man living with her when you returned from serving your country in the war?” “What planning did you make regarding your move, and how could you get all of your “stuff” in your truck unless it was a moving van?”

“One day you have a home and the next day you are on the streets…” It looks to me like Luis made a conscious decision to put himself in his current situation. As I have said many times before--you have the God given right in this country to be STUPID, and it is neither my obligation nor that of the government to save you from yourself.

Then there is star homeless veteran number two.

“Lance Cpl. James Claybon Brown Jr., 23, is staying at a shelter run by U.S.VETS in Los Angeles. He fought in Iraq for 6 months with Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 2nd Marines and later in Afghanistan with another unit. He said the fighting in Iraq was sometimes intense…Brown acknowledged the mental stress of war, particularly after Marines inadvertently killed civilians at road blocks. He thinks his belief in God helped him come home with a sound mind."

Don't tell the liberals, but here is a young veteran who's religion has kept him from going crazy. Isn' that supposed to be impossible? Aren't you supposed to entrust your sanity to the government and a healthy dose of Prozac?

As usual, the UPI reporter can't resist tossing a few standard stabs at the war and the military. They quote Corporal Brown as saying:

We had a few situations where, I guess, people were trying to get out of the country. They would come right at us and they would not stop," Brown said. "We had to open fire on them. It was really tough. A lot of soldiers, like me, had trouble with that."

"That was the hardest part," Brown said. "Not only were there men, but there were women and children -- really little children. There would be babies with arms blown off. It was something hard to live with."

"Brown said he got an honorable discharge with a good conduct medal from the Marines in July and went home to Dayton, Ohio. But he soon drifted west to California "pretty much to start over," he said.

Brown said his experience with the VA was positive, but he has struggled to find work and is staying with U.S.VETS to save money. He said he might go back to school."

So again I’d like to point out that, contrary to the article’s headline, this guy decided to leave his home in Ohio VOLUNTARILY and move to California. He’s staying in the shelter to save money. Sounds like the first smart decision he has made since he left Dayton. Are we supposed to feel sorry for him or what? Also, he says that his experience with the VA was positive. What's up with that?

“Peter Dougherty, director of Homeless Veterans Programs at the VA, said services for veterans at risk of becoming homeless have improved exponentially since the Vietnam era. Over the past 30 years, the VA has expanded from 170 hospitals, adding 850 clinics and 206 veteran centers with an increasing emphasis on mental health. The VA also supports around 300 homeless veteran centers like the ones run by U.S.VETS, a partially non-profit organization.

"You probably have close to 10 times the access points for service than you did 30 years ago," Dougherty said. "We may be catching a lot of these folks who are coming back with mental illness or substance abuse" before they become homeless in the first place. Dougherty said the VA serves around 100,000 homeless veterans each year.”

So I respectfully ask, which is it?

Is there a crisis with homeless Iraq War veterans or isn’t there. Is it the American people's fault, the Government's, or the individual's?

All I see here is a sensational headline backed up by a bunch of facts and figures that add up to nothing.

Is it just me???