Download PDF of this full issue: v7n2.pdf (8 MB)

At Veterans' Admin.: Different Face--Same Old Attacks

By VVAW

In what at first appears to be an unprecedented move, Car has appointed Max Cleland, a triple amputee Vietnam vet, as head of the Veterans Administration. The Carter strategy of "fresh blood" and "people who came from nowhere, "designed to win votes from the American people who were sick and tired of the old gang, is at work now at the VA.

However, just like Carter's national cabinet composed of recycled hacks from the Johnson and Kennedy administrations and other "unknowns" who sit on the boards of directors of some of the most powerful corporations in America, Max Cleland is no newcomer either.

Max is, in fact, an old political warhorse. Previous to his tour of duty in the Army, Max served as a Congressional intern in the US House of Representatives. Following his return to civilian life, Cleland quickly became a Georgia State Senator and fast friend of Jimmy Carter, then governor of Georgia. After he failed to become Lieutenant Governor of that state, Mac picked up and moved to Washington to serve as a staff member of the Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs until Carter tapped him to head the VA.

Heralded as the first VA chief who wasn't first the national leader of some traditional vets organization, Max hasn't severed all ties with the past. His first official act was to appoint Rufus H. Wilson, former national commander of Amvets and a VA bureaucrat of over 20 years, as his number 2 man. Wilson, like Cleland, a member of every national vets organization on the books--not including VVAW--has served as director of the VA's Department of Veterans Benefits since 1975, a VA department which has earned the disgust and hatred of vets everywhere.

Regardless of the multitude of promises by these two gold-plated bureaucrats regarding changes in the VA system, one fact remains. The VA is a huge, $19 billion a year operation with the largest healthcare system in the US, the largest adult education program and, in short, an immense bureaucracy that is supposed to serve 30 million vets plus dependents, totaling nearly 45% of the US population.

A close look at the VA will show that the services for vets are being slashed, cut back, and eliminated because they don't serve the interests of the rich who would rather spend money elsewhere for a better rate of return. Mr Cleland and Mr Wilson will see to it that these policies are carried out.

Just like the guy who appointed him, Cleland becomes tight lipped when confronted with serious questions concerning changes in the VA system. His references to "reduction in some areas" and "consolidation" in others sound like the same old crap we've been hearing, dressing up attacks on vets in the language of bureaucrats.

Mr. Cleland recently state "I no longer fly by the seat of my pants as I once did. I ask God for guidance every morning and he has led me here." Well, that's fine, but it won't be a quest for religion that will lead thousands of vets to the VA. They'll be there in the day-to-day fight for what they need to survive.

In spite of his "divine right to rule" at the VA, Max Cleland and the rich he fronts for will have to answer to vets for the way they try to force us to live.