Stop for moment and imagine a perfectly run Veteran’s Administration. One that makes you proud. What would it look like? Walk-in immediate service? Single point, one time data entry? An insurance card that allowed veterans to get high quality health care anywhere, anytime, from any hospital? Out-reach to homeless vets? A welcoming, friendly, honoring place?

I could go on, but my question is, why don’t we have a VA like this? Why do we not take exemplary care of our Veterans? In my view, (I’m not a veteran) we first have to look at ourselves and our relationship with veterans, with war and the military.

It’s a checkered relationship to say the least.

Some highlights:

On May 15th, 1924 the President of the United States, Calvin Coolidge, said, “Patriotism bought and paid for is not Patriotism.” He then vetoed a bill to give veterans of World War I a bonus. Fortunately, Congress overrode that veto.

Later, during the great depression, many of those Veterans of World War I marched on Washington to demand that their bonuses be paid early. It was 1933, most of them were out of work, hungry, with their families. They camped out in Washington. They were eventually met by the then current US Army, led by Gen. MacArthur ( of the Philippines “I shall return” fame or infamy) and a young Major Eisenhower, future Supreme commander of the invasion of World War II Europe and eventual president. The “bonus marchers” were driven out with tanks and their camps burned.

During and after Vietnam, returning vets were often treated shamefully. Not, I might add, by just the anti-war contingent but often by the military itself and politicians. A salient story was told by a Vietnam veteran friend of mine. He was a helicopter pilot in 1970-71. After an evacuation mission, he received his orders to return home. Twenty-four hours later he was standing in the Eden Prairie Mall in Minnesota. No parades, no welcome home speeches. As a country, we wanted to forget the entire experience of that war, including the veterans.

I write this only because I think as a country of civilians we can’t just point to politicians, or the head of the VA and cast blame. Instead, we need to look at ourselves and understand that we have deeply rooted and conflicted feelings about our VA. We want to be assured that it works and at the same time it seems, hide them all in a dark corner so that we do not have to deal with Veterans and what they represent: war, horror, loss, pain and tragedy.

Our government, in bad policies, in playing politics with the VA, in large measure simply reflects this public mood.

We have, in my humble opinion, an ambivalence about our veterans partially because we have a terrible ambivalence about the military. This is not a bad or a good thing, it just is. We live in a dangerous world where a robust military is required and at the same time, war, the ultimate mission of the military, is always a horrific solution. Anton Myrer wrote in Once an Eagle, “Once the drums begin to beat. . . there is nothing ahead but fear and waste and misery and desolation . . . once the engine has started it must shudder and rumble to the very end of its hellish course, come what may.”

Blessedly for us we have never been invaded. We’ve been attacked twice, once at Pearl Harbor and once in New York. Terrible as those were, they pale in comparison to the experiences of countries that have been attacked or overrun by invading armies; France, Germany, Russia, Vietnam, Poland, Israel, Rwanda just to name a few. Recall that the Russians lost over twenty million individuals in World War II.

Our wars of this century and the last, whether you think them as just or not, as “holy wars” or “the militaristic, expansionistic expression of the Capitalist State” all carry one common characteristic: We send our young men and women overseas to fight and die in other countries, in wars, that George Washington himself, called “foreign entanglements.”

This runs right up against our stubborn, American-innate isolationism. It is part of our nature as Americans. We will rise to challenges. Young American men and women seem eternally willing to volunteer for terrible duty; Flanders, Tarawa, Omaha beach, the Chosin reservoir, Khe Sanh, Fallujah.

Yet at the same time as a country, as a population, it creates dissonance in us.

Unlike World War II, when everyone had a stake in the war and followed it daily, now who can tell you how many Marines died at Khe Sanh or what our military strategy is in Afghanistan?

The most haunting reminder of this was an off-hand remark on the nightly news during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. A soldier’s wife said, “America is not fighting a war. The American Military and their families are. America is watching American Idol.”

We want amnesia. We don’t want to know. This has consequences for the VA and veterans. This latest crisis, following multiple decade of scandals, simply becomes political theater until the next midterm election is over and we can blithely go our way and enjoy the Super Bowl.

Watch: As soon as the elections are over, the VA crisis will go away. Let me amend that. The crisis will still be there: Horribly wounded vets, vets with PTSD, TBI will still be waiting months. Their benefits will still take months to be processed. But the politicians will turn away as will most of the country: We don’t want to know, we want the comfort of amnesia.

A final plea. It should make no difference if you were for or against our most recent wars. If you were against them, then rail against the politicians who send young men and women to battle.

But we must hold the warriors close to the heart of the country.

As for me, I vociferously disagree and am insulted by Coolidge’s remarks. My grandfather, Woody Wilson, was one of those returning veterans. He never spoke of that war, but I looked it up. I read about the Somme and Flanders Fields.

As far as I’m concerned, a wounded vet goes to the front of every line. If it means we blowup (figuratively!) the VA, give every Veteran free health care from where ever he or she wants it, for the rest of their lives, I say tax me more. We owe it to them.

Recall, if you will, Shakespeare’s Henry V and the Saint Crispin day speech:

“. . . Be in their flowing cups freshly remember’d. This story shall the good man teach his son; And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by, From this day to the ending of the world, But we in it shall be remember’d;”

Teach your daughters and sons. Don’t forget just because Memorial Day is over or the latest scandal about VA is about to run its course. Rather, to the “ending of the world remember.”

And remember by caring. In a year from now, nothing will have changed unless we continue to care. Don’t let our politicians, who are simply reflections of us, distract us. Do not give in to amnesia: Never forget!