Veterans Day Has Passed

 

Veterans Day has once again passed for another year. We posted our flags and patriotic memes honoring our veterans. Now we can go about our daily routines and ignore the true cost of freedom.

Wars, preparing for wars, and taking care of those who have suffered loss in that effort is an expensive proposition. We have long lived beyond our means with a callous disregard for some of the not-so-hidden costs of protecting our freedoms. We will drop over $400 billion developing an F-35 and spend over $600 billion for our four military branches to function for a year. The Department of Defense budget for 2023 was $1.8 trillion. This represents almost half of our discretionary spending.

Calls for budget cuts are regularly in the news and amount to a political hot potato that becomes hotter with elections on the horizon. Budget cuts are important but only when the other party is in office. We seem to always be heading for another election that is more important than the last. Most of us also know that the US spends more money on defense than the combined spending of the next ten countries.

Most countries in this top ten are our allies. Could or should we cut our military spending in deference to reducing our national debt or perhaps spend that money on other needs like infrastructure, improving the healthcare system for the non-billionaire classes, improving education for all, or finding solutions to climate change. Perhaps we would think twice about military solutions when diplomacy might work.

Did we need the F-35? I’m certainly not able to make that determination. I just know that it is a very expensive system at $75M a copy with an operating cost of over $7M each year per plane. Their promotional brochure states: “The F-35 strengthens national security, enhances global partnerships, and powers economic growth. It is the most lethal, survivable, and connected fighter aircraft in the world, giving pilots an advantage against any adversary and enabling them to execute their mission and come home safe.” Who can argue with that? Perhaps someone should.

What the brochure didn’t mention was that, like many things within the confines of our dysfunctional military-industrial complex, its development was ten years behind schedule and more than 80% over budget. Could we have saved a few bucks if we settled for Mach 1.5 instead of Mach 1.6 speeds? If you can only fly at 1,227.63 mph and hypersonic missiles can exceed 3,800 mph, that extra decimal point might buy you an extra nanosecond of life expectancy.

None of these decisions is in my wheelhouse, they are just cause for reflection so we might consider how our nation might be better served with a little belt-tightening and maybe consider a different distribution of our precious tax dollars. It’s either that or we start taxing the very wealthy with percentages like what you and I pay. Oh, the horror. Since the very wealthy own the politicians and the courts, a fair taxing of the yachting-private jet set is not in our foreseeable future. For the record, the wealthiest 400 families pay about 8.2 percent in taxes on their incomes while the average American taxpayer pays 13 percent.

The very expensive and stealthy F-35 only came up after I read an article that discussed our war effort of 2016 in Syria and Iraq as we had a ground war with the Islamic State. That was the very first time the F-35 flew in actual combat. It was flown by Israel’s IAF. To minimize American casualties and shorten the war, it was decided that bombardment with heavy artillery would be used by our forces. American artillery crews launched hundred-pound shells at targets over fifteen miles away. They did this nonstop, twenty-four-seven. Over 10,000 times gun crews did this in a matter of months. Those on the receiving end were put out of commission, but the gun crews were also suffering a stealthy injury, unaware of the future consequences.

Much like the repeated shocks received by boxers and NFL players over time, the loud explosions that launched our artillery shells also did damage to the crews. They started having problems with nausea, memory and balance, irritability, sleeplessness, and fatigue like symptoms of someone suffering a concussion. They were all screened with normal tests designed for people suffering a single large explosion, and those tests found nothing out of the ordinary. The tests were not designed for repeated smaller blast waves. These crews had been subjected to shock waves that repeatedly reverberated through bones, tissue, organs, and the brain.

Complaints from the crews were diagnosed as ADD, depression, or PTSD, and some were given psychotropic drugs for relief. When job performance was affected, some were punished for misconduct and a few with punitive discharges which cut them off from veterans’ health care. As civilians, their marriages failed, jobs were lost, and some became homeless. Some committed suicide.

Even Heavy Hand-held Weapons
Provide Shock Waves For The Operator

Recent studies now suggest minute scarring of the brain. This has now been found in those who have been subjected to multiple shock waves as might come from cannons, mortars, RPGs, or even heavy machine guns. This microscopic tissue damage in the brain may only be found at autopsy so diagnosis is difficult. There was a limited 2016 DOD-funded study of postmortem subjects. That study compared a control group to others with chronic blast exposure (similar to the heavy artillery crews), acute blast exposure, and those with opiate exposure.

The results showed that all the chronic blast exposure subjects had unique and prominent scarring of “the subpial glial plate, penetrating cortical blood vessels, grey-white matter junctions, and structures lining the ventricles.” All subjects of acute blast exposure showed these same results. I won’t suggest that I know what this technical description means but brain damage comes to mind, no pun intended.

When I heard that such damage suffered by the heavy artillery crews could also be seen in repeated exposure to even heavy machine gun fire, I thought of Robert Card, the US Army Reserve firearms instructor who killed 18 people in Maine recently. He certainly had been around explosive gunfire. He had been previously discharged from a mental health facility after complaining of hallucinations. Would a postmortem brain analysis provide any insight?

The cost of our nation’s defense goes beyond the cost overruns of the F-35 program. There is a human cost. Our veterans deserve the best care we can provide. One way to support our troops would be to call on their services as a last resort and not as a quick solution.