Editorial

We can all do more to support veterans

Posted

For anyone who has not served in combat, it’s impossible to understand the horrors of war. We can try to imagine them, however.

We can imagine driving across the hellish landscape of Iraq or Afghanistan in an armored convoy, hoping, praying, that our vehicle doesn’t strike an improvised explosive device.

We can imagine mortars raining down from above, whistling across the sky before exploding with deafening thunderclaps nearby.

We can imagine American soldiers stabbed or shot, bleeding profusely on a chaotic battlefield shrouded in smoke. We can picture them lying lifeless on the parched ground of a desert or a mountain, the wind whipping dust in their faces.

We can also imagine brandishing semiautomatic rifles, firing at the enemy, knowing full well that someone on the receiving end of our bullets will be wounded or killed.

Such is the life of the soldier.

It is a harsh, unforgiving existence, wholly different than the normalcy of civilian life. When our soldiers come home from war, they often need all of our help to readjust to the workaday world, which has its headaches and heartaches, but is rarely a life-or-death proposition.

Yet too often our soldiers are forgotten, pushed aside. They desperately need medical and mental-health care, but many times in the past they have been denied services for one reason only –– money. There simply weren’t enough funds, they were told.

As a result, too many of our heroes are committing suicide. According to a report released by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs in February 2013, an estimated 22 veterans take their own lives every day. Nearly 70 percent of those who do so are 50 or older. The majority fought in the first gulf war, Vietnam, Korea, even World War II.

What does this tell us? After living for decades with the psychic wounds that war inflicts, they can take it no more, and they end their lives. It also tells us that we may be facing a suicide epidemic of seismic proportions among veterans.

A full 50 percent of the 2.6 million veterans who served in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars between 2002 and 2011 are struggling with physical and psychological issues, according to a national poll conducted in 2015 by the Kaiser Foundation and The Washington Post.

As was the case with the soldiers who preceded them, their battlefield demons are likely to continue to haunt them in later life. In many cases, those demons will be too much to bear –– unless we, as a nation, step in now, not later, to lend a helping hand.

Sen. John Walsh, a Democrat from Montana, became the first Iraq combat veteran to serve in the Senate. In 2014 he introduced the Suicide Prevention for America’s Veterans Act, which would have upgraded mental-health services for veterans. In the Republican-controlled Senate, however, the measure went nowhere.

Sen. John McCain, a Republican from Arizona and a Vietnam War hero, later introduced the Clay Hunt Suicide Prevention Act, which passed the Senate 99-0. The House of Representatives passed it on a roll-call vote, and President Obama signed it into law in February 2015.

Still, all of us can do more to make sure our veterans receive the hero’s welcome they so rightly deserve. There are a number of South Shore nonprofit organizations that support them by providing food, clothing, shelter and support services. Each of us should give what we can.

Here are groups with proven track records of aiding veterans that deserve our contributions:

• The Stephen Siller Tunnel to Towers Foundation, named for a New York City firefighter who grew up in Rockville Centre and died trying to save others after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The foundation builds adaptive homes for wounded veterans returning from war. For more, go to www.tunnel2towers.org.

• The Valley Stream-based Building Homes for Heroes, a national organization, also constructs adaptive homes for injured veterans. It can be found at www.buildinghomesforheroes.org.

You should also consider giving to your local American Legion or Veterans of Foreign Wars post. Many provide assistance to hospitalized veterans.

Finally, Nassau County will host a Veterans Stand Down on Nov. 22, at the Freeport Armory, at 63 Babylon Turnpike, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., at which social, medical and mental-health services will be available to veterans in need. For more, call Ralph Esposito at (516) 572-6565.