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Carter Against Vets

By VVAW

SMILES; BROKEN PROMISES; MORE SMILES; CUTS...

After only two and a half years of Jimmy Carter, people are longing for Jerry Ford; even though he did nothing but hit his head a lot, at least there was only a high rate of inflation (instead of a skyrocketing inflation), and has was only 60 cents a gallon! In fact, people are longing for almost anyone—Mickey Mouse could give Jimmy Carter a run for his money, and John Travolta would probably win.

And veterans have our own issues where Carter, with grand promises and splendid flourishes, has fallen flat on his face, and the result has been a continuation of a series of abuses of veterans.

Just because we're vets doesn't necessarily mean that we're stupid. We realize that when the country's economy is going straight to hell in a handcart, when gas—if available—is too expensive to afford, when crime rates jump ahead, while the ability to read jumps behind—we don't believe, under these circumstances, that the President should devote his primary attention to the problems of veterans. Many of us wouldn't really care a hell of a lot if he just ignored vets. But that's not what's happening. While he tries to pacify vets on one hand, appointing a Vietnam vet as head of the VA, or building a Vietnam veterans monument at Arlington National Cemetery, or declaring Vietnam Veterans Week, his other hand is creeping into the VA budget, getting essential programs and proving the lie of all his fine public statement.

Among the gems to come out of the Carter Administration or Congress in the past six months are:

• 850,000 Vietnam era vets lose their GI Bill eligibility in 1979; the 10 year delimiting date, despite Carter's promises to improve the situation, has been lifted for only 953 of those vets!
• Because a number of vets haven't repaid VA school loans or GI Bill overpayments, the VA asked the White House to withhold tax refunds for the effected veterans: this was in addition to hiring private collection agencies.
• In keeping with Carter's budget cutting, a House committee has recommended a 1500-bed cut in the VA hospitals. In Chicago, this has already meant that disabled vets have been shuttled out of the VA into nursing homes, which are even less equipped than the VA to deal with the particular problems that veterans face.
• Cut off dental care for vets, which is now authorized for the first year after discharge.
• Insist that Blue Cross or similar type plans reimburse the VA for care given to vets covered by such plans.
• Given the budged cuts, one Congressman pointed out that any care for non-service-connected disabilities would be eliminated. Given the refusal of the VA to even admit to service-connected disabilities (the cases of Agent Orange, radiation poisoning, or PVS are the most vivid examples of the VA refusing to care for the victims of military service), this concept is especially deadly for thousands of veterans. For unemployed vets, which number in the hundreds of thousands, or for underemployed vets—agricultural workers, for example—whose jobs provide little or no medical benefits, this would mean the end of any potential for treatment.
• With great fanfare, the VA has talked about how it will now deal with Vietnam veterans with drug-related problems—psychological readjustment will move forward, they say, with 20 VA drug treatment centers approved for 1979. In fact, the VA has spent less than one percent of what has been spent on hospitalizing Vietnam vets for psychological problems, many because counseling was denied to them. Nixon, in 1973, had more drug and alcohol treatment centers than are proposed by the current VA budget!

Vietnam vets are understandably suspicious of politicians on all levels of government. After all, they're the people who sent us off to fight for their purposes in the first place. Even so, many of us were impressed by Carter's seeming concern for veterans and especially for Vietnam veterans. Hell, he wore his American Legion beanie, he talked good, he said good things about vets; one of his first acts as President was a partial amnesty for Vietnam war resistors, (though later evidence has demonstrated that even this was more appearance than reality).

But, instead of something new and different, it was the same old nonsense—lots of fine sounding talk and no action—except for "action" that attacked Vietnam vets. At its barest level, vets are good for votes—there are 29 million of us, plus our families, and that adds up to a potent voting force. At the same time, programs like the GI Bill, vets benefits, and VA healthcare don't make much money for anyone. The result is what we're seeing with Carter: fine talk and nothing concrete.

While there are plenty of examples of how the government is throwing away its veterans, the issue of Agent Orange sets right on the line. Vets have no way of knowing how many of us have been affected by Agent Orange poisoning, though it's clear that some of us were. The story of Agent Orange victims was made public in March, 1978. For thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of veterans, the revelation explained what was happening or had happened to them.

And what did Carter's VA do about the problem? For the first few days, it tried to react—until the VA chiefs got together and projected what it would mean to have to test, treat and compensate for what could be as many as 2.9 million vets. As soon as the reaction was out of the hands of VA workers, as soon as an official policy was set, it was clear that vets were about to get screwed again. First, the VA decided there was no effects from Agent Orange. It wanted vets to "prove" exposure, almost impossible, except for the handful of vets that actually handled the defoliant. As word about the defoliant got out, through the efforts of groups like VVAW or Agent Orange International, certainly not by any efforts by the VA—then, where there was enough stink, the VA was forced to do something to cover its ass.

It sent Maude DeVictor, a Chicago VA worker who first came up with the information about Agent Orange victims, to the Siberia of home loans, where she wouldn't cause any more trouble. It allowed that vets with chloracne, a fierce skin rash likely to come from direct contact with the defoliant, and usually a short duration, might be a symptom; but completely refused to accept the many other effects of the exposure to the defoliant, claiming that scientific surveys had only concentrated on animals, not humans. When vets sued, it established the 'Advisory Committee on Health Related Effects of Herbicides', including Dow Chemical Company scientists, whose salaries are paid by the company which makes Agent Orange and says it's totally safe. A six year program of investigation has been envisioned (probably hoping that the vets most affected by Agent Orange will be dead by then).

While we don't much like it, we expect politicians to lie to us in order to get elected. That's how the system works. Carter's track record on lies hasn't been much better or worse than anyone else's. The difference has been the big lie—the one that he's out there pitching for Vietnam veterans, doing all he can—and he is; if you only count his words, and don't look how he's jamming it to Vietnam vets in particular, and to vets of all eras, every chance he gets!