By Ibrahim Abdil-Mu'id Ramey
MAS Freedom Civil and Human Rights Director
WASHINGTON, D.C. (MASNET) Nov. 12, 2007 - The epidemic of homelessness among military veterans is an abomination, and an indictment of the war system
Yesterday, news media reports in the Washington, D.C. area released a statistic that will startle most people in America: of the more than 12,000 homeless people in the Washington, D.C. area, about a quarter of them are veterans of the U.S. military.
National statistics are equally bleak. On November 8, 2007, the National Alliance to End Homelessness released a 36-page report indicating that, on any given night, there are nearly 200,000 homeless veterans in America; twice that number experience homelessness at some point during the year.
For a military that prides itself of projecting an image of egalitarianism and real opportunity for soldiers, these numbers aren’t just troubling – they are disgraceful.
Most veterans are certainly not homeless, and most homeless men are not veterans. But the staggering number of persons who served honorably in the armed forces of the United States, only to find themselves without a roof over their heads, should tell us something about the war system - and the moral priorities of the leaders who recruit people into the military.
The United States will spend, in the next fiscal year, more than $500 billion on the military, and more that that if you count billions more for supplemental appropriation for the virtually bottomless pit of the conflict in Iraq.
While it seems to be relatively easy for our tax dollars to buy rifles, and tanks, and helicopters, it seems equally impossible for our taxes to provide adequate housing, jobs, and rehabilitation for the men and women who find themselves trapped under the cold, hard underbelly of the system that many of them fought to defend.
In my numerous conversations over the years with veterans from the first Gulf War to the 2003 Iraq invasion, I'm struck by their nearly unanimous feeling of bitterness and alienation from the Veterans Administration, and the failure of the V.A. to provide them with the assistance and resources they need to re-integrate themselves into society. V.A. facilities for counseling, civilian job training, and health care resources are totally inadequate; the family challenges created by ever-longer combat tours enormous.
For wounded and disabled vets, however, the story is much worse. Many of them have experienced being denied disability claims. And growing numbers of combat veterans are coming back with not only physical wounds, but with combat-related psychological disabilities that the government won’t acknowledge - or treat. They, like the heroin-addicted soldiers of the Vietnam era, all too often find themselves on the waste heap of war.
President Bush and Vice President Cheyney, who are zealously sending hundreds of thousands of men and women into the vortex of the Iraq war, seem less that eager to demand the resources needed to care for them when they come back home.
I'm not a supporter of war, and especially the one being fought by the United States in Iraq. But the personnel in the armed forces are honorable human beings who deserve the care and consideration due to them for their service to the country.
For the richest nation in the world, and one that has the capacity to build shelter for everyone, the idea of a soldier who comes home to homelessness is more than unfortunate. It is morally intolerable.
Showing posts with label War. Show all posts
Showing posts with label War. Show all posts
Monday, November 12, 2007
Thursday, October 18, 2007
A Turkish Invasion of Iraq Would Only Bring More Tragedy to the Region
By Ibrahim Abdil-Mu'id Ramey
MAS Freedom Civil and Human Rights Director
WASHINGTON, D.C. (MASNET) Oct. 18, 2007 - Some of us who are old enough to remember this episode in American history will recall the decision by the Pentagon, in 1970, to invade Cambodia in the height of the war for national liberation in Vietnam. Ostensibly, the U.S. military invasion was carried out to dislodge North Vietnamese Army and National Liberation Front troops from their sanctuaries in Cambodia. However, the real effect of the American incursion was to bring more fervor to the U.S-and global-anti-war movement.
Three years later, in 1973, U.S. forces withdrew in defeat from Vietnam. A much more recent, but similar fate, befell the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 2006.
It's unfortunate that the war planners in Ankara are apparently not very astute students of recent military history, because the Turkish parliament is now apparently ready to approve an incursion by Turkey into Northern Iraq, with the purpose of routing Kurdish militants from the PPK from their Iraqi staging areas. The proposed invasion, much to the dismay of Iraq (but with the approval of Syria, which has its own problems with a Kurdish minority) would bring heightened war to the one region of Iraq that has avoided much of the carnage that grips the southern part of than nation. And it would likely result in untold deaths and casualties, not only among armed resistance fighters, but primarily among innocent civilians as well.
But an invasion of Iraq would hardly mean the end of the armed resistance by the Kurds, or the desire for an autonomous Kurdistan favored by the Kurdish minority in Turkey, Iraq, and Syria. Armed resistance movements are mobile, and resilient; many of them would simply withdraw from some areas and regroup in others. And widening the war could possibly increase the militancy and resistance of the Kurdish population in Iraq to Turkish military forces. Moreover, it could poison the already-strained relationship between Turkey and its southern neighbor.
For the sake of human lives and the hope of an end to bloodshed, we urge the government of Turkey to resist any pressure to invade Iraq. The centuries-old issue of the political status of the Kurdish people must be resolved in some other way.
In the final analysis, history has a way of demonstrating that these cross-border military incursions, for whatever reason they are executed, almost always come back to harm the invading nation more than those whom they attack.
RELATED:
Support Wanes in House for Genocide Vote
Turkish MPs Back Attacks in Iraq
MAS Freedom Civil and Human Rights Director
WASHINGTON, D.C. (MASNET) Oct. 18, 2007 - Some of us who are old enough to remember this episode in American history will recall the decision by the Pentagon, in 1970, to invade Cambodia in the height of the war for national liberation in Vietnam. Ostensibly, the U.S. military invasion was carried out to dislodge North Vietnamese Army and National Liberation Front troops from their sanctuaries in Cambodia. However, the real effect of the American incursion was to bring more fervor to the U.S-and global-anti-war movement.
Three years later, in 1973, U.S. forces withdrew in defeat from Vietnam. A much more recent, but similar fate, befell the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 2006.
It's unfortunate that the war planners in Ankara are apparently not very astute students of recent military history, because the Turkish parliament is now apparently ready to approve an incursion by Turkey into Northern Iraq, with the purpose of routing Kurdish militants from the PPK from their Iraqi staging areas. The proposed invasion, much to the dismay of Iraq (but with the approval of Syria, which has its own problems with a Kurdish minority) would bring heightened war to the one region of Iraq that has avoided much of the carnage that grips the southern part of than nation. And it would likely result in untold deaths and casualties, not only among armed resistance fighters, but primarily among innocent civilians as well.
But an invasion of Iraq would hardly mean the end of the armed resistance by the Kurds, or the desire for an autonomous Kurdistan favored by the Kurdish minority in Turkey, Iraq, and Syria. Armed resistance movements are mobile, and resilient; many of them would simply withdraw from some areas and regroup in others. And widening the war could possibly increase the militancy and resistance of the Kurdish population in Iraq to Turkish military forces. Moreover, it could poison the already-strained relationship between Turkey and its southern neighbor.
For the sake of human lives and the hope of an end to bloodshed, we urge the government of Turkey to resist any pressure to invade Iraq. The centuries-old issue of the political status of the Kurdish people must be resolved in some other way.
In the final analysis, history has a way of demonstrating that these cross-border military incursions, for whatever reason they are executed, almost always come back to harm the invading nation more than those whom they attack.
RELATED:
Support Wanes in House for Genocide Vote
Turkish MPs Back Attacks in Iraq
Friday, September 28, 2007
The Kyl-Lieberman Amendment Means a Green Light for War with Iran
By Ibrahim Abdil-Mu'id Ramey
MAS Freedom Civil and Human Rights Director
WASHINGTON, D.C. (MASNET) Sept. 28, 2007 - A bold and potentially dangerous amendment has been added to the U.S. Defense Authorization Bill of 2008 that could very well lead to a pre-emptive U.S. attack on Iran.
If you missed it, you're not alone. It's the Kyl-Lieberman amendment, named after its principle sponsors in the United States Senate (Republican Jon Kyl of Arizona and crypto-Republican Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, who used to be, at least in name, a Democrat). The amendment, which expressed the sentiment of the Senate, was passed by an overwhelming majority of 77 to 23.
What the amendment actually means is this: The Senate urges the U.S. to formally regard the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, and the Al Quds Force, as "terrorist" organizations, and to authorize the use of "military instruments" to confront Iran.
This amendment to the bloated Department of Defense (DOD) authorization bill was largely created as a response to recent congressional testimony from General David Petraeus, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, who testified that Iran trains Iraqi insurgents and supplies them with munitions, including sophisticated bombs used against U.S. armored vehicles and convoys.
Senator Hillary Clinton, by the way, voted in favor of the amendment. Senator Barak Obama did not vote at all.
Senator Lieberman did, in fact, address the Senate to assert that the amendment calls for economic sanctions, rather than military attacks, against the Iranian military organizations. But while falling short of an all-out call for, the Kyl-Lieberman amendment is widely believed to be a measure that opens the door for a pre-emptive military attack on Tehran.
It's certainly no secret that the Bush administration is moving in the direction of war with Iran. U.S. military assets are being positioned for air strikes against suspected Iranian military (and suspected nuclear) installations, while the U.S. is busy galvanizing international support for even more stringent sanctions against that nation.
Kyl-Lieberman now gives what amounts to a green light for the kind of aggression that could very well lead to a shooting war that would result in the catastrophic loss of untold human lives in the region - including, sadly, even more Americans in uniform.
I believe that any economic or military attack on Iran would only expand the tragedy, and folly, of a war in Iraq that should never have begun in the first place.
The Kyl-Lieberman amendment is regressive and dangerous, and we encourage you to contact the offices of your Senators to express your objections to a new U.S. war on the people of Iran.
MAS Freedom Civil and Human Rights Director
WASHINGTON, D.C. (MASNET) Sept. 28, 2007 - A bold and potentially dangerous amendment has been added to the U.S. Defense Authorization Bill of 2008 that could very well lead to a pre-emptive U.S. attack on Iran.
If you missed it, you're not alone. It's the Kyl-Lieberman amendment, named after its principle sponsors in the United States Senate (Republican Jon Kyl of Arizona and crypto-Republican Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, who used to be, at least in name, a Democrat). The amendment, which expressed the sentiment of the Senate, was passed by an overwhelming majority of 77 to 23.
What the amendment actually means is this: The Senate urges the U.S. to formally regard the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, and the Al Quds Force, as "terrorist" organizations, and to authorize the use of "military instruments" to confront Iran.
This amendment to the bloated Department of Defense (DOD) authorization bill was largely created as a response to recent congressional testimony from General David Petraeus, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, who testified that Iran trains Iraqi insurgents and supplies them with munitions, including sophisticated bombs used against U.S. armored vehicles and convoys.
Senator Hillary Clinton, by the way, voted in favor of the amendment. Senator Barak Obama did not vote at all.
Senator Lieberman did, in fact, address the Senate to assert that the amendment calls for economic sanctions, rather than military attacks, against the Iranian military organizations. But while falling short of an all-out call for, the Kyl-Lieberman amendment is widely believed to be a measure that opens the door for a pre-emptive military attack on Tehran.
It's certainly no secret that the Bush administration is moving in the direction of war with Iran. U.S. military assets are being positioned for air strikes against suspected Iranian military (and suspected nuclear) installations, while the U.S. is busy galvanizing international support for even more stringent sanctions against that nation.
Kyl-Lieberman now gives what amounts to a green light for the kind of aggression that could very well lead to a shooting war that would result in the catastrophic loss of untold human lives in the region - including, sadly, even more Americans in uniform.
I believe that any economic or military attack on Iran would only expand the tragedy, and folly, of a war in Iraq that should never have begun in the first place.
The Kyl-Lieberman amendment is regressive and dangerous, and we encourage you to contact the offices of your Senators to express your objections to a new U.S. war on the people of Iran.
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