The news about long waits and manipulated figures in the V.A. system is very depressing but not at all surprising. In fact, Rudyard Kipling’s 1892 poem “Tommy” lets us know that we have been treating our military personnel this way for a long time. (Thanks to my brother David for reminding me of the poem.)
In case you haven’t been paying attention, General Shinseki, Secretary of Veterans Affairs, resigned on Friday because V.A. facilities were caught cooking the books on wait times. Sometimes it takes a veteran half a year or longer to enter the system, and financial incentives to speed things up have instead led to fraud. The Los Angeles Times provides some perspective on the problem:
There have been problems and questions concerning the delivery of some healthcare services from Veterans Affairs for years, and the issue has been investigated both internally and by Congress many times. In recent weeks, though, the complaints have taken on a greater urgency with many veterans returning from long stints in Iraq and Afghanistan flooding the beleaguered system, which operates 1,700 hospitals and clinics and handles 85 million appointments a year.
The affair is a political embarrassment for the Obama administration, which had promised to fix the problem. But Democrats and Republicans both bear responsibility since both parties have proven more willing to start wars than face up to the resulting human and financial repercussions. Sometimes the pressures on the system have been made even worse by doing the right thing–for instance, acknowledging that Agent Orange took a toll in the Vietnam War and that PTSD takes a toll at all times, especially on men and women undertaking multiple deployments.
Kipling is sometimes guilty of our contradictions. For instance, he embraces the colonial mission and celebrates the sacrifices that it entails in his cringe-inducing poem “The White Man’s Burden: The United States and The Philippine Islands”:
Take up the White Man’s burden–
Send forth the best ye breed–
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives’ need…
A poem like “Fuzzy-Wuzzy,” meanwhile, makes light of blood and slaughter in a macho sort of way. Try not to be seduced by the respect that the speaker, a common soldier, gives to the Sudanese enemy. After all, we’re talking about the horrors of war here:
We’ve fought with many men acrost the seas,
An’ some of ’em was brave an’ some was not:
The Paythan an’ the Zulu an’ Burmese;
But the Fuzzy was the finest o’ the lot.
We never got a ha’porth’s change of ‘im:
‘E squatted in the scrub an’ ‘ocked our ‘orses,
‘E cut our sentries up at Sua~kim~,
An’ ‘e played the cat an’ banjo with our forces.
So ‘ere’s ~to~ you, Fuzzy-Wuzzy, at your ‘ome in the Soudan;
You’re a pore benighted ‘eathen but a first-class fightin’ man;
We gives you your certificate, an’ if you want it signed
We’ll come an’ ‘ave a romp with you whenever you’re inclined.
To Kipling’s credit, however, he at least calls out the hypocrites who, after glorifying soldiers, then give them the shaft when they return home. He especially does this in “Tommy”:
I went into a public-‘ouse to get a pint o’ beer,
The publican ‘e up an’ sez, “We serve no red-coats here.”
The girls be’ind the bar they laughed an’ giggled fit to die,
I outs into the street again an’ to myself sez I:
O it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy, go away”;
But it’s “Thank you, Mister Atkins”, when the band begins to play,
The band begins to play, my boys, the band begins to play,
O it’s “Thank you, Mister Atkins”, when the band begins to play.
There’s more in this vein as the poem progresses (you can read it in its entirety here), but it’s the final stanza that is particularly relevant to our current situation:
You talk o’ better food for us, an’ schools, an’ fires, an’ all:
We’ll wait for extry rations if you treat us rational.
Don’t mess about the cook-room slops, but prove it to our face
The Widow’s Uniform is not the soldier-man’s disgrace.
For it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Chuck him out, the brute!”
But it’s “Savior of ‘is country” when the guns begin to shoot;
An’ it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ anything you please;
An’ Tommy ain’t a bloomin’ fool — you bet that Tommy sees!
Yes, Tommy is not a bloomin’ fool. He (and now she) sees as he has always seen. Hopefully, the publicity from this on-going scandal will mean that the rest of us see as well and that we pressure both political parties to bring the necessary focus and resources to the problem.
And while we’re at it, let’s also reject all those calls we hear for more military interventions.
