The Rich and the Dead

This post has been almost a year in the making. 

I have cooked it and cooked it and cooked it, not knowing how to start it or how to end it. 

A year or so ago began a very public series of suicides of Canadian veterans:

November 25, 2013:  Master Bombadier Travis Halmrast

November 26, 2013:  Master Cpl. William Elliot

November 27, 2013:  Warrant Officer Michael Robert McNeil

December 3, 2013:  Master Cpl. Sylvian Lelievre

December 25, 2013:  Retired Cpl. Leona MacEachern

January 3, 2014:  Cpl. Adam Eckhardt

January 8, 2014:  Cpl. Camilo Sanhueza-Martinez

January 16, 2014:  Lt.-Col. Stephane Beauchemin

(Related but not a suicide:)

March – Romeo Dallaire crashed into a traffic barrier on Parliament Hill after falling asleep at the wheel.

Day after day, it seemed, during the darkest days of 2013 and 2014, former soldier after former soldier took their own lives. Over and over and over.

Reports of the Veteran’s Affairs ministry came out about the cuts to services, clawing back of benefits, and the closing of VA offices.  Veterans were speaking out about how they were being forced to choose between their mental health and their pension:  if they stated to the Defence Department or VA that they were “unfit for duty” before their 10 years of service was up as a result of mental health needs (such as PTSD) and if the Defence Department ruled that the mental health issues pre-dated their service time, the vet would lose his/her pension.

What?!

I have to state this one more time so I am able to process it:  if a vet, before his or her 10 years service mark has been reached, comes forward to say that his/her PTSD has become too much for them to handle, has rendered them “unfit for duty,” the Defence Department may (and has more often than not) declare(d) that said individual is not eligible for his/her pension if the DD determines that the PTSD, or other related mental health issues, pre-date his/her time in the military.

Stack this knowledge on the closing of eight VA offices, the stripping of funding to mental health supports, the lack of supports for vets to help them transition to civilian life, and what do you get?:  A frustrated military person attempting to blow up a VA office in downtown Calgary last week.

If you spoke to anyone in DD or VA, they would assure us that policies are in process of being changed, that the necessary changes needed to implement the recommendations made by The House of Commons Standing Committee on Veteran’s Affairs are “phasing in,” and that millions of extra dollars are being poured into the mental health of soldiers. 

If you spoke to Julian Fantino (Minister of Veteran’s Affairs) or Rob Nicholson (Defence Minister), they would assure us all that our vets are being taken care of and that no one in the military is being forced out before they are ready.

Except that is not what our vets are telling us in either word or deed. 

Too many vets have taken their own lives because they have no idea how they are going to care for their family without their military family’s help – their country’s help.

Mental health services have been decimated across this country at every level from Child and Youth Mental Health services, to services for severely mentally ill people on the streets, to our vets.  Federal and provincial governments have failed to provide citizens with the care they desperately need.

The fact that Stephen Harper and his cronies can puff up their chest and declare the death sentences of hundreds of more soldiers, in yet another fight that is not ours, and then cut off the support they need when/if they come home is appalling and shameful.  This government is all about selling out and cashing in.

We have all heard of the treatment this government has given vets and yet nothing changes. 

Stephen Harper loves to make vets but hates to take care of them when they return from his phony wars.  SHAME!

Julian Fantino fattens himself off of a post which steals money from men and women (and their families) who so desperately need it.  He turned his back on vets, stood them up, and refused to apologize when he was called out on his abhorrent, disrespectful behaviour.  SHAME!

Rob Nicholson attaches himself to international conflicts and coalitions which have nothing  to do with Canada, sacrificing yet more Canadian citizens, only to deny their need upon their homecoming…making many of them homeless.  SHAME!

Government capitalises upon the jingoism of past wars, WWI and WWII, for example and uses Armistice Day as a photo op to support its current, hawkish designs. 

The same key words are employed now to stir the people to arms as were one hundred years ago:  militarism, freedom, justice, way of life, terrorism (Gavrilo Princip was called a terrorist by the Austrians and Germans in 1914). 

The same old sentiment is employed to drum up support for sending yet more troops into yet another battle with which we have no connection.

The same people blindly support those old sentiments, stating that “our way of life is in danger.”

Bullshit. 

I side firmly with Gwynne Dyer and his idea, as discussed in his newest book:   Canada in the Great Power Game: 1914-1918, that Canada has been hoodwinked into war after war by Empire after Empire, causing us to sacrifice our citizens needlessly.

I agree.  We all too quickly have a knee-jerk reaction to things (shootings in Ottawa, vehicular homicide in Quebec) and attach meanings to them which have been foisted upon us by the Empire du jour. 

We swing on the teat of those Empires and, because of our imaginary indebtedness, blindly, willingly cast off hundreds of thousands of lives.

We must stop this. 

Somehow we must stop this.

We must stop the grotesque use of the iconography and rituals of Remembrance as a form of jingoism – especially as used by those who would pile high the corpses of those they have sacrificed.  This is a time to honour the dead, not to feed the war machine.

We must provide help for all those who need it – military service people or otherwise – particularly for mental health issues.

We must, by any means necessary, hold our governments to accompt when it comes to the care of those who have served.  We may not agree with the wars in which they served but we, as a society, owe support to those who chose to serve in them.  

The government put them there.  The government owes them some modicum of respect for placing them in harm's way.

Nearly one year ago, several vets illustrated that point.