An Open Letter to The Veterans Affairs
Dear Veterans Affairs,
Hello, my name is Kayleen and I am a student at Summit Shasta. In my English class we have been completing a project about war and whether or not war is helpful and if we should go to war. In this project we have been learning about some of the effects of participating in war from reading articles and short stories relating to the topic. During this project I have realized that we should not go to war because it causes a very high death toll. A majority of these deaths are very unnecessary. During a war many veterans get injured and when they come back sometimes they need extra support. They would get that help and support from the VA (Veterans Affair). The care that America gives to their veterans is only average and these problems need to be addressed.
Based on my research, I believe that war is irrelevant and it can damage veterans and when they get back they won’t get their support. This problem is relevant because a lot of military troops end up dead or mentally damaged from the warfare because when they go to war they face other troops and are forced to kill each other when they could have settled something without having to go to war and kill each other and they are not fully supported after the war. They are taking away those soldiers lives for sometimes no reason. A great example of this occurring is the war that we could be coming upon with North Korea. This has received more attention because if we do go to war again because President Trump has mocked North Korea’s President, Kim Jong-un the VA might not have enough availability to support more veterans. The next quote is about how the VA is not doing their best in supplying veterans with more and better health service. “More than 125,000 U.S. veterans are being denied crucial mental health services,” and “Rubio, Miller ask committee to back VA accountability bills.” This quote is by Peter Hegseth from the National Review. This shows how the veterans are not getting enough proper care. If we don’t go to war than there would be less of a need to get help from the VA. This could prevent veterans from needing support at all because they never experienced those traumatic events. We could even use this solution today and create peace with North Korea so that everyone can stay safe on both sides.
Finally I hope that you will think about trying to improve the transition from veterans when they come back from war. When working on my project we had to read this article called “A Legacy of Pride and Pain” by Tim Burns. This article opened my eyes to how hard it is for veterans to get back to their normal life after going into war. Tim Burns states “The veterans are often frustrated with the services provided to them by the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Pentagon and other government agencies. Almost 60 percent say the VA is doing an “only fair” or “poor” job in addressing the problems faced by veterans, and half say the military is lagging in its efforts to help them transition to civilian life, which has been difficult for 50 percent of those who have left active service.” This shows how poorly the Veterans Affair is doing at helping the veterans get back into their normal life. 60 percent is saying that the VA is not doing a very good job at what they are supposed to be doing. When veterans come back from war and are injured they turn to the VA to give them the support and help that they need to get back into normal life and most veterans have to wait a very long time until they get the help that they actually need.
However it is important to remember that the percent of veterans that have received help from the VA they only think that they did a fair or poor job which would give them little to no support in the transition back. This quote is about the rate of homeless veterans and how the programs that supposedly support veterans with housing are not doing the best they can. “The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs estimates that 131,000 veterans are homeless on any given night.” and “23% of homeless population are veterans.” This shows how a fair portion of veterans end up homeless because of high, expensive rents.
Something that the government could do is they could put more money into the VA department to the budget so that they hire more help and this would improve the service because they would have more people helping veterans so that they will not have to wait to get the help and support they need from those harsh environments and traumatizing events. Thank you for reading this open letter and I hope that you will think about the safety of our country and our veterans before you decide to go to war.
Sincerely,
Kayleen C.
