Odds

Call me a cynic if you will, but all the yellow ribbons on earth will never make up for a decent, well-funded Veterans Administration backed by a Pentagon and a society that cares as much for returning troops as it does for those in the field. Both the living and the dead deserve proper honor. For me it is a simple equation: Never send American servicemen into harm’s way outside the strict guidelines imposed by the United States Constitution; fully equip them on the field of battle; respect and care for war veterans; and honor the grave sites of our war dead.

Others have demonstrated ways we have failed veterans of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; I won’t enumerate them here. Two lapses include providing decent psychological care to returning vets and fully investigating the Gulf War syndrome.

Salon is now focused on Arlington National Cemetery, where “a criminal investigation and allegations of misplaced bodies and shoddy care have roiled the famous burial ground.” Not only do current burial records not match headstones, but in an area where service members from Iraq and Afghanistan are buried, “personal mementos placed on graves are left out to rot in the rain for days, ruined by workers with power washers, or thrown into a trash bin.”

“The aesthetics of the cemetery are deceptive,” says Gina Gray, an Army veteran of eight years who served in Iraq and who was the cemetery’s public affairs officer in early 2008, before she was fired over a clash with her boss. “To the naked eye, it is a place of sacred beauty and a tribute to our nation’s heroes,” says Gray, who has been rehired as an Army contractor at Fort Belvoir, in Virginia. “But if you scratch below the surface, you will find that it’s really just window dressing. They’ve put these pretty curtains up to hide the ugliness on the inside.”

Those interested in “supporting the troops” should take time to read through the entire series, beginning today.