Our Lost Soldiers Wandering America’s Streets

BY ROGER ARMBRUST · NOVEMBER 11, 2014

Finding Homes for the Brave who are Far from Free

(The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) estimates that 49,933 veterans are homeless on any given night. That’s a dramatic drop in number since my column below was published on Yahoo! on Nov. 19, 2011. I hadn’t written a column for Yahoo! in two years, deciding to publish elsewhere. I recently discovered that Yahoo! had erased all my columns, making them no longer available on the Internet. Here’s the column on homeless military veterans. I wanted to share it with you today: Veteran’s Day. For the record, I’m leaving my original figures in the column. For updated figures, you can check the links following the column. Thank you for your service, all Veterans, both those with and tragically without homes.)

How can we help our more than 100,000 military veterans who have served our nation yet stumble homelessly through it? The reality is this: If Americans can find an answer to safely sheltering them, and then help them return as active members of society, we may find the solution to our country’s overall pervasive and tragic homeless problem—3.5 million people in any given year (1.35 million of them children).

Homeless Veteran

Can helping the homeless veteran help all the homeless?

A group calling itself “The 100,000 Homes Campaign” is one service organization looking for a solution. Its goal is to house 100,000 homeless Americans by July 2013. It reports having currently housed 11, 271 through its nationwide, community-based program.

This month, it also issued a data report: “National Survey of Homeless Veterans in 100,000 Homes Campaign Communities.” Its trained volunteers set out in 47 towns, and interviewed 23,000 homeless individuals. They used a questionnaire “based on leading medical research by Drs. Jim O’Connell of Harvard University and Stephen Hwang of the University of Toronto,” the study notes. The scientific survey “screens for health and social conditions linked to an increased risk of death among homeless individuals. It also asks for data on age, health status, institutional history (military, hospital, jail, prison), length of homelessness, patterns of shelter use, and previous housing situations.”

Of the 23,000 homeless individuals surveyed, 3,493 were American veterans. To put that in perspective, the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans, using estimates from the federal Veterans Affairs Department, says, “107,000 veterans are homeless on any given night. Over the course of a year, approximately twice that many experience homelessness. Only eight percent of the general population can claim veteran status, but nearly one-fifth of the homeless population are veterans.”

Who are these homeless veterans? Hear first from their National Coalition:

America’s homeless veterans have served in World War II, the Korean War, Cold War, Vietnam War, Grenada, Panama, Lebanon, Afghanistan and Iraq (OEF/OIF), and the military’s anti-drug cultivation efforts in South America. Nearly half of homeless veterans served during the Vietnam era. Two-thirds served our country for at least three years, and one-third were stationed in a war zone.

Roughly 56 percent of all homeless veterans are African American or Hispanic, despite only accounting for 12.8 percent and 15.4 percent of the U.S. population respectively.

About 1.5 million other veterans, meanwhile, are considered at risk of homelessness due to poverty, lack of support networks, and dismal living conditions in overcrowded or substandard housing.

The 100,000 Homes Campaign’s survey released this month notes:

While the percentage of surveyed veterans who reported having fought in America’s most recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan was small (1.5%), this group displayed a number of striking qualities. As a group, Iraq/Afghanistan vets often suffer brain injury.

Many Iraq and Afghanistan veterans suffer brain injury.

Iraq and Afghanistan veterans were considerably more likely to report suffering from a traumatic brain injury than veterans of other wars. They were also more likely to report having received some form of mental health treatment, though significantly less likely to report having health insurance.

The study supposed that was due to the federal government’s increased “attentiveness to brain injuries and combat-related mental health symptoms.”

The study also compared percentages in illnesses suffered by surveyed veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, and those involved in earlier conflicts: Twenty-seven percent of Iraq/Afghanistan veterans reported brain injuries, compared to 19% from earlier engagements. Having received mental health treatment: Iraq/Afghanistan 46%, earlier wars 41%. Serious health condition: 42% to 56%. Substance abuse 57% to 61%. Those having health insurance: 44% to 59%.

The report showed that military veterans experienced homelessness longer than non-veterans: 5.77 years, compared to 3.92 years for homeless non-veterans. “Similarly, 62% of veterans reported having been homeless for two years or more, while 50% of non-veterans said the same. Among those who had been homeless for more than two years, total length of homelessness jumped to 9 years for homeless veterans and 7.3 for homeless non-veterans.”

The 100,000 Homeless campaign sees a connection between getting veterans a home and a subsequent return to better health:

In the last several years, VA has embraced permanent housing as a central plank in its efforts to address homelessness among veterans. There is good reason to suspect that the increasingly broad implementation of this strategy in communities across the country will result in the emergence of a clear correlation between a veteran’s connection to VA benefits and both improved health and reduced length of homelessness.

Still, the survey shows that about half the surveyed homeless veterans haven’t received mental health treatment, and don’t have health insurance. It would seem logical that this nation–that can spend millions designing and operating pilotless drones–could find a positive way to house, treat and insure our soldiers who have served and are suffering.

Meanwhile, the 100,000 Homeless campaign keeps taking its efforts into local communities, believing that’s where substantive solutions abide. The campaign is overseen by Common Solutions, a national spin-off of the New York City-based not-for-profit Common Ground. Becky Kanis leads the 100,000 Homeless effort. Following years at West Point, she eventually got involved in Times Square and the Street to Home Initiative. The 100,000 Homeless drive lists among its “sponsors, partners and allies” the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, Bank of America, and the National Alliance to End Homelessness.

For more information about the 100,000 Homes Campaign, visit its website: http://100khomes.org/.

To find out more about the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans: http://www.nchv.org/about.cfm.

U.S. Sen. Cotton, on AETN, Supports Aggressive War

  BY ROGER ARMBRUST · JANUARY 3, 2016

Tom Cotton, Arkansas’s freshman U.S. senator, made clear this weekend his support for

ramping up aggressive war on ISIS and America’s enemies in the Middle East — calling Iran a

“mortal enemy” and pushing the need to remove Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. He also said

Americans “have plenty to be afraid and frustrated about” due to terrorism and the $17 trillion

national debt.

U.S. Senator Tom Cotton

In a half-hour interview taped nearly a month ago but just aired Friday on AETN, Arkansas’s PBS

affiliate, Cotton kept the half-hour interview centered on the Middle East.

He allowed a couple of minutes specifying he believes federal highway funds should be limited

to building and maintaining the nation’s interstate system, and not spent on state or local

projects, such as funding a Los Angeles or New York subway system.

He spent one sentence expressing concern that Americans haven’t seen wage increases in a

couple of decades.

What he did NOT discuss, nor seem interested in bringing up, were the following issues which

are torturing Americans, and which we’ve discussed in past columns:

1) While spending most of his interview promoting aggressive war in the Middle East, Cotton —

who served in both Iraq and Afghanistan, receiving a Bronze Star — didn’t even mention the

750,000 active military and veterans suffering from TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury) and PTSD (Post-

Traumatic Stress Disorder), the tragic brain injuries caused by military conflict and leading to a

continuing plague of suicides.

2) The over $1 trillion college loan debt which is frustrating our young, and even abusing our

elderly.

3) The $1 trillion credit card debt, which is increasing as banks turn more to subprime lending, not

only for credit cards, but auto loans, and, yes, mortgages.

4) The $2.3 trillion estimated need for U.S. infrastructure.

5) The gluttonous growth of the nontransparent (as in secret) derivatives investment industry,

considered the chief cause for the economic meltdown of 2007-08. International banking

analysts are expressing consistent concern that the derivatives racket, at a then-high of over

$600 trillion in 2007, was also that high in 2014, and expected to “boom” through 2019.

Analysts are also extremely wary of the growing private debt worldwide.

6) The skewed employment figures from government, ignoring the fact that 50 million Americans

are on food stamps, 7 million Americans want full-time jobs but can’t find them. And while

part-time jobs are being created, the country’s seeing no increase in incomes (except for top

execs) and no benefits for part-time workers (many working two jobs or more) and their

families.

7) A bubble stock market, fed not by executives investing in their corporations to create real jobs

with rising employee incomes and benefits, but buying back their companies’ stocks to enrich

their own and stockholders’ incomes.

8) The conservative assault on state and local levels against women and minority rights, primarily

coming from Cotton’s Republican Party.

9) The now-turned America from a democracy to an oligarchy.

10) America’s nuclear-weapons buildup leading to Russia and China’s adding to their nuclear

arsenals.

The Neo-Con Line

Cotton’s position of concentrating dialogue on aggressive war in the Middle East is essentially

Washington’s neoconservative, exceptionalist obsession – basically in line with the Millionaire

Congress, Millionaire president, military-industrial complex, Wall Street and corporate media

conglomerates endlessly pushing the racket of endless war. It’s sucking the budget of any

chance to fund solutions to America’s true needs, but instead sends taxpayers’ money to the

weapons industry and the bankers who back it.

“Arkansas Week” veteran newsman Steve Barnes

Cotton stressed Iran as a “mortal enemy” that’s supporting global terrorism. But he didn’t seem

particularly concerned about leaders in Saudi Arabia who support terrorism, or the Egyptian

military dictator who toppled a democratically elected government and is stifling dissent – even

though veteran newsman Steve Barnes called him on that in the interview — since Cotton

considers them U.S. allies.

Barnes also suggested to him twice that the Middle East quagmire has no easy solution. Cotton,

a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and Special Committee on Intelligence,

would respond by dropping names of foreign leaders and statistics, emphasizing that the U.S.

must work with allies to defeat radical Muslims.

At one point he said if radical Muslims make up one percent of the 1 billion Muslim world, that

means their numbers are “in the millions”. He then later summarized his view by saying if the

U.S. increases its military effort against those millions, it means “we win and they lose”. He

wasn’t clear about how the U.S. would work with allies to do that, nor did he mention

anywhere in his interview dealing with Russia and China.

Through the half-hour interview, he did mention a couple of times the $17 trillion national

debt, yet offered no detailed explanation of how to cut or eliminate it.

But most of all — in offering his neocon view — Cotton obviously wants you to be afraid of

being blown up by terrorists in the United States, and not concern yourself with making enough

money to support a family, pay drug and hospital bills, work your way out of being mired in

credit debt, nor think about the young swamped with student loan and credit debt that’s

keeping them from buying homes and starting families.

AETN’s interview with Cotton, on the program “Arkansas Week”, is not yet posted online.

(This column first ran in reality: a world of views.)

Vet Colonel Scathes Gulf Military Policy, Prez Hopefuls

BY ROGER ARMBRUST · APRIL 9, 2016

A retired Army colonel – who is also a Vietnam veteran, military historian and best-selling author — has issued a clear, concise condemnation of America’s four-decade foreign policy in the Middle East, as well as ominous criticism of presidential candidates Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton and Ted Cruz.

Andrew J. Bacevich

Andrew J. Bacevich, a 20-year Army veteran and now a professor emeritus of international relations and history at Boston University, is author of the new book America’sWar for the Greater Middle East: A Military History. He was interviewed Friday, April 8, on the TV program “Democracy Now” about the premise of his book, and also his view of the current presidential hopefuls.

Endless Gulf Wars

Concerning Middle East involvement, Bacevich said the U.S. has a “failed” policy which has “abused” the American military. In his book, he observes:

From the end of World War II to 1980, virtually no American soldiers were killed in action while serving in that region. Within a decade, a great shift occurred. Since 1990, virtually no American soldiers have been killed in action anywhere except in the Greater Middle East. President [Jimmy] Carter neither intended nor foresaw that transformation — any more than European statesmen in the summer of 1914 intended or foresaw the horrors they were unleashing. But he, like they, can hardly be absolved of responsibility for what was to follow.

Carter-Bush-Clinton-Bush-Obama

 “Democracy Now” host Amy Goodman played three brief clips quoting three presidents — George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama — all stating “we will prevail” in the Middle East. She asked Bacevich, “Have we prevailed in any way?”

George H.W. Bush, Barack Obama, George W. Bush (l-r)

Bacevich responded:

Well, we haven’t. And I have to say, those are exquisitely chosen clips, because they really do illustrate what’s the point of my book. And that is that we have been engaged militarily in the Greater Middle East, large parts of the Islamic world, for going on four decades. We’ve engaged in innumerable interventions—large, small, brief, protracted—and we have yet to come anywhere close to achieving our aims. Whether we define our aims as restoring stability or promoting democracy or reducing the prevalence of anti-Americanism, it’s not happening. And arguably, our military efforts are actually making things worse.

In his interview, Bacevich concisely described the four-decade evolution of America’s futile Gulf policy:

…prior to the beginning of the Cold War, the United States was not a great military power. We raised forces from time to time to deal with some particular issue, but it was in the wake of the Cold War that we, as a nation, decided on a permanent basis to maintain a large military establishment.

For the first several decades of that Cold War, the United States had two priorities. We were willing to fight for Western Europe. We were willing to fight—did fight—in East Asia. We were not willing to fight for the Middle East. That changes in 1980, specifically a particular moment in January of 1980, when President Jimmy Carter, in his State of the Union address, promulgates what’s known as the Carter Doctrine…

…Carter himself had no understanding of the implications that would flow from that statement. What happens, on an immediate basis, is that the national security bureaucracy now redefines its priorities and begins to orient itself toward the possibility of armed intervention by U.S. forces in the [Middle East] region. And over the course of the next 10 years, that process begins: [Ronald] Reagan sending peacekeepers into Lebanon, the initial jousting with Colonel Gaddafi in Libya, support for Saddam Hussein, of all people, in what I refer to as the first Gulf War—that’s the Gulf War of 1980 to ’88, pitting Iraq against Iran, with the United States coming to the aid of Iraq.

So, Carter starts the process of militarizing U.S. policy, which, over time, deepens, becomes more frequent, becomes more ambitious and becomes more costly, bringing us to where we are today in 2016, where we continue to hear these speeches by presidents insisting — insisting that we will prevail — when obviously we have not.

Bacevich’s view basically coincides with our analysis stated in our Oct. 18, 2015 reality column headlined “Obama Widens Carter’s, Bush’s Global-Rule Policies”. In that column we detailed the Brzezinski Plan under President Carter and the Wolfowitz Doctrine under George W. Bush.

Presidential Candidates as Dangerous Hawks

Cruz-Trump-Clinton

Ted Cruz, Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump (l-r)

Bacevich expressed grave concern about the hawkish views of presidential candidates Trump and Cruz on the Republican side and Clinton on the Democratic. He described Trump as having an infantile personality unfit for the role of commander in chief, and slapped Cruz for surrounding himself with “Islamophobes”:

I have a five-year- old grandson, who I love dearly, and he’s a wonderful boy. He also has a tendency to blurt out whatever happens to be passing through his mind. And it seems to me that Donald Trump, who is not five years old, suffers from the same sort of inclination. And it suggests that he would be an enormously dangerous commander-in- chief. And I think we all recognize people say things on the campaign trail that may not actually reflect their intentions were they to be in office, but there does come—there are moments when the gap between what’s being said and what ought to be done by any responsible person, when that gap is so broad that the rhetoric itself, I think, becomes a disqualifying factor.

But let me quickly add, it’s not clear to me that Senator Cruz, who is the apparent alternative, is, by any inclination, any better. And if you take a look at the people Cruz is surrounding himself with as foreign policy advisers, that, to my mind, is deeply troubling…we’ve got Islamophobes. We’ve got General—retired Lieutenant General Boykin, who, for all practical purposes, sees the war for the Greater Middle East as an exercise in Judeo-Christian jihad. I mean, he is keen to go slay the Muslims and, clearly, views Islam itself as the enemy.

Of Clinton, Bacevich stated:

…Secretary Clinton is an unreconstructed hawk. Now, in terms of the rhetoric, she comes across as more reasoned than the Republican opposition, but the fact of the matter is, if we elect her to be our next commander-in- chief, we are voting for the continuation of the status quo with regard to U.S. national security policy, and specifically U.S. national security policy in the Greater Middle East. So, for people for whom that is an important issue, who want to see change in U.S. policy, she’s not going to be the vehicle for change.

Bacevich’s statement was in response to Goodman’s quoting Sen. Bernie Sanders, Clinton’s Democratic opponent, who criticized the former Secretary of State as having a pro-war stance. Other than that, Bacevich did not discuss Sanders. Nor did he speak of third-party candidates. But Bacevich did explain his own stance on supporting the renewal of a military draft:

I think that one of the unintended consequences of ending the draft, creating a professional military, was to create a gap between the military and society. Now, we don’t acknowledge that gap. Matter of fact, we deny the existence of that gap by all of the rhetorical tributes that are paid to the troops and the obligation that we all have to, quote-unquote, “support the troops.”

The reality, I think, is that when it really comes down to it, the American people don’t pay much attention to how the troops are being used. And because they’re not paying attention, the troops have been subjected to abuse. That is to say, they’ve been sent to fight wars that are unnecessary. The wars have been mismanaged. The wars go on far longer than they ought to.

And we respond by letting people in uniform be the first to board airplanes. And I think, frankly, that that is disgraceful and that it actually ought to be one of the things that gets discussed in a presidential campaign, but tends not to, sadly.

We expressed a similar frustration regarding the American public’s lack of concern for our troops in a 2012 column in The Clyde Fitch Report: “Memorial Day: Recalling and Caring for Our Constant Brave”.

Goodman asked Bacevich, who lost a son serving in Iraq in 2007, “What do you want these presidential candidates—what do you want to hear from them? What do you want them to say to you?”

Bacevich answered:

What they ought to say to us, not simply to me because of my personal circumstances—what they ought to say is:

‘I understand that we, as a nation, have been engaged in this war for going on four decades now, and I have learned something from that experience. I have taken on

board what the United States tried to do militarily and what it actually ended up doing and what the consequence is that resulted. And here’s what I’ve learned, and here’s how I’m going to ensure, if you elect me commander-in- chief, that we will behave in ways that are wiser and more prudent and more enlightened in the future.’

In other words, they have to look beyond simply the question of how many more bombs are we going to drop on ISIS. That is a secondary consideration. They have to have some appreciation of the history, that I try to lay out in this book.

(This column originally ran in reality: a world of views.)

Trump WILL Go After Middle East, Eurasia Oil

In our column “Obama Widens Carter’s, Bush’s Global-Rule Policies”, we wrote how the United States’ endless Middle East wars are a lust for world domination through controlling Eurasia, especially its energy resources. Donald Trump is showing he’s preparing to expand that continuum to the max.

The present president, America’s Chief Exceptionalist, for years has obsessed over forcefully taking the Middle East’s oil, his eye specifically on Iraq and Libya. It’s clear that he believes America has the right to other countries’ oil, and needs not be concerned about international law in going and taking it.

 

Trump: Obsessed with Middle East oil

As the National Review reported in mid-2015, the early days of the presidential campaign:

Case in point: American policy in the Middle East, where Trump has in recent years repeatedly endorsed the bizarre, bellicose fantasy that the U.S. could and should seize oil fields in Iraq and Libya.

In 2007, Trump said that the U.S. should “declare victory and leave” Iraq, “because I’ll tell you, this country is just going to get further bogged down.” Four years later, as Obama prepared to withdraw U.S. troops from the country, Trump was more or less getting his wish. But by then he appeared to be arguing that the U.S. should maintain its troop presence simply to seize Iraqi oil fields…

…At CPAC 2013, Trump said… ““When I heard that we were first going into Iraq, some very smart people told me ‘well, we’re actually going for the oil,’ and I said, ‘Alright, I get that, there’s nothing else, I get it. We didn’t take the oil! And when I said, we spent $1.5 trillion we should take it and pay ourselves back. What are we doing? What the hell are we thinking?”

… To this day, Trump sees the oil fields as the fulcrum of power in the Middle East. After being prompted by Anderson Cooper to elaborate on his plan to deal with the terrorist group ISIS, Trump declared, “I would bomb the hell out of those oil fields. I wouldn’t send many troops because you won’t need them by the time I’m finished.”

Trump's Calculated Moves

Now, nestled impishly in the White House, Trump has made calculated moves which show he’s aiming to “take the oil” and let Big Oil and Wall Street profit away, the environment be damned. Here are significant actions which show his plan:

1.     He has brought in Big Oil’s major mover as his chief foreign-relations rep, i.e. Secretary of State: Rex Tillerson, former chairman of ExxonMobil, the largest of the Big Oil corporations. Rexxon, at this writing, is visiting Moscow for his first official government face-to-face with Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister. He eventually met with President Vladimir Putin, who’s upset with Trump’s recent bombing of a government airbase in Syria, where Trump has also begun to send U.S. ground troops in country.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson

But Tillerson, as ExxonMobil’s head, held friendly meetings with Putin in the past on his company’s lucrative projects in Russia, some stalled by U.S. and EU sanctions. As The New York Times reported last December:

Exxon Mobil has various projects afoot in Russia that are allowed under American sanctions. But others have been ground to a halt by the sanctions, including a deal with the Russian state oil company to explore and pump in Siberia that could be worth tens of billions of dollars.

Russian officials have optimistically called the agreement a $500 billion deal.

2.     Trump has wiped clean from theWhite House website any mention of climate change. This is an Orwellian move to turn American minds off to dangers from the planned increased burning of fossil fuels. It's also to implant the propagandized necessity of oil production at home and invading other countries to secure their oil for U.S. purposes – increase jobs and grow the economy.    

.  3.  He has appointed Wall Street execs, military brass, and neocon politicians to major cabinet positions, aiding his effort to secure the banking industry’s and military support for his pro-oil policies. He’ll probably get it from the bankers and neocons, whose top priority is profit.

The military contingent may prove tougher. Experienced military officers often push against aggression. For one reason, because aggressive war was the chief accusation and conviction against the Nazis in the Nuremberg trials following World War II. But also because they see that the Washington neocons who push America into wars tend to have an unrealistic view of the consequences.

James Mattis, Trump’s defense secretary and a former army general, in February quickly tried to buffer Trump’s “get the oil” statements by saying flatly, “We’re not in Iraq to seize anybody’s oil.” But Mattis may not be able to stand up against Trump and the Exceptionalist, neocon clout in D.C. 

 4.     Trump has proposed drastically increasing the defense budget, because he’ll need military might to take over other countries’ oil, and even greater might if he’s going to move against Russia.

5. He wants to balloon Washington’s nuclear-arms capability as a threat to any who oppose his Exceptionalist effort to control the world’s oil. We wrote of concern about this neocon effort creating a New Cold War in our column for The Clyde Fitch Report: “Nukebuild:This Will Not End Well”. This was even before Trump sailed into office, calling for the U.S. to become the world’s greatest nuclear power.

  

Nukebuild will not end well.

Can’t you also see Trump envisioning what to do after getting Iraq’s and Libya’s oil? Go for Iran. Then Saudi Arabia, once a CIA-led revolution starts against the kingdom’s royalty. Maybe even go in to Russia and secure all those oil and gas reserves for Rexxon.  Don’t you think that’s how his mind works?

There are foreign relations experts, economists, and press who say Trump’s brash desire to move in and take Middle East oil won’t work. But, if you asked him, he’d probably retort that’s what they said about his chances of becoming president. 

Too, he has a Congress packed with millionaires who want to be billionaires. They’ll tend to go with the Wall Street banksters rather than the military realists. Of course, by the time Congress understands what’s going on, climate change or mushroom clouds – the Earth's and civilization’s greatest threats -- may have taken final control.

Meanwhile, what will you do? For years we’ve suggested you need to get organized (you can’t do it alone), educated to issues, and active in bringing change, if you want change. If you don’t want change, or are afraid of activating it…your children will evaluate you one way or another. If the world’s around for them.