Imag­ine my sur­prise today when the phone rings and some­one who turned out to be an Army recruiter from the North Bend office asked to speak to my old­est son. He was a bit coy before finally telling me he was a recruiter but went on to state he just wanted to know if my son was still in the area and to talk to him about his future plans.

Given my son is thirty years old the first thing I thought was they were going to try and call him back as my son has less than a month left on Indi­vid­ual Ready Reserve Sta­tus. So I asked him if he was aware my son, John, was dis­abled and he said he was not. After I told him John was per­ma­nently dis­abled after two tours in Iraq serv­ing as a Marine assault­man suf­fer­ing from PTSD and TBI the recruiter told me he, at least, would not call again. He agreed, John had done is bit for God and coun­try and I said, “Yes, he is done”. (Plus, those Marines aren’t that fond of the Army).

Won­der­ing if they call a lot of thirty year olds or if this was just an accident…

The US mil­i­tary has loos­ened reg­u­la­tions, issu­ing “moral waivers” allow­ing con­victed crim­i­nal to join up just as they did dur­ing Viet­nam. GIs suf­fer­ing from PTSD and TBI are being called back into com­bat for third and fourth tours to make up for the 99% of the US that do not care to enlist. Read my essay about draft­ing war sup­port­ers here

Nev­er­the­less, despite Army reg­u­la­tions that pro­hibit sol­diers from par­tic­i­pat­ing in racist groups the mil­i­tary have hit a new low as to meet­ing their recruit­ment needs and are accept­ing white suprema­cists.

Fol­low­ing an inves­ti­ga­tion of white suprema­cist groups, a 2008 FBI report declared: “Mil­i­tary expe­ri­ence — rang­ing from fail­ure at basic train­ing to suc­cess in spe­cial oper­a­tions forces — is found through­out the white suprema­cist extrem­ist move­ment.” In white suprema­cist inci­dents from 2001 to 2008, the FBI iden­ti­fied 203 vet­er­ans. Most of them were asso­ci­ated with the National Alliance and the National Social­ist Move­ment, which pro­mote anti-Semitism and the over­throw of the U.S. gov­ern­ment, and assorted skin­head groups.

Because the FBI focused only on reported cases, its num­bers don’t include the many extrem­ist sol­diers who have man­aged to stay off the radar. But its report does pin­point why the white suprema­cist move­ments seek to recruit vet­er­ans — they “may exploit their accesses to restricted areas and intel­li­gence or apply spe­cial­ized train­ing in weapons, tac­tics, and orga­ni­za­tional skills to ben­e­fit the extrem­ist movement.”

In fact, since the movement’s incep­tion, its lead­ers have encour­aged mem­bers to enlist in the U.S. mil­i­tary as a way to receive state-of-the-art com­bat train­ing, cour­tesy of the U.S. tax­payer, in prepa­ra­tion for a domes­tic race war. The con­cept of a race war is cen­tral to extrem­ist groups, whose adher­ents imag­ine an erup­tion of vio­lence that pits races against each other and the government.

Given the mil­i­tary are not focused on win­ning hearts and minds or nation build­ing it may seem incon­se­quen­tial to have extrem­ists of this type in the mil­i­tary unless, of course, the guy back­ing you up or giv­ing you orders is black or Jew­ish or His­panic, or heaven for­bid, Gay! and the suprema­cist is depend­ing upon them to survive.

It is sad that peo­ple like this exist. It is crim­i­nal that peo­ple like this should be allowed into the mil­i­tary and taught how to use weapons. It is sick­en­ing that peo­ple like this live in Coos County.

Talk about scrap­ing the bot­tom of the barrel.

Our year-end fam­ily rit­ual is to reflect upon the good things the year brought and we typ­i­cally ring in the New Year with a grand toast, a series of toasts, in grat­i­tude for bless­ings past. This year my fam­ily has so much to be grate­ful for and I want to her­ald in the new with a nod to the past.
To so many I owe so much for help­ing our fam­ily help my war­rior son, John, on that long hard jour­ney from com­bat to home­com­ing. There were times when his night­mares, two or three a night, became too much for all of us and a friend would lend a shoul­der to cry on or a safe har­bor to rest in.
Thank you to his broth­ers in arms from ear­lier wars that alone knew all too well what he suf­fered and the impact upon his fam­ily and ral­lied to help him climb the dark side of the moun­tain and turn his face into the sun. After almost three months in the VA hos­pi­tal he learned to tame his demons, to respond rather than react and made life­long friends.
Espe­cially I am grate­ful to John’s own dogged Marine deter­mi­na­tion to reroute his neu­rons and relearn to be a pro­duc­tive mem­ber of soci­ety. Today he lives in a won­der­ful com­mu­nity in Cal­i­for­nia that under­stands and sup­ports our vet­er­ans and is attend­ing a col­lege that has put spe­cial empha­sis on adapt­ing to the spe­cial needs of com­bat vet­er­ans.
John now works with col­lege regents and plan­ners to help other vet­er­ans be suc­cess­ful in school and speaks at many pub­lic func­tions in sup­port of these goals. His movie star good looks and new found speak­ing skills has brought him to the atten­tion of doc­u­men­tary film mak­ers and he will be work­ing both in front of and behind the cam­era to pro­duce media to help our vet­er­ans.
Thank you to John’s baby brother, Chris, who gave up his own plans to stick with us and endured so much hard­ship in the process, we couldn’t have done it with­out you. Thank you to his sis­ters, Sarah and Shan­ley, for under­stand­ing, (most of the time any­way).
For John’s mother, she is eter­nally grate­ful to all who helped him make these strides and while his life is still a strug­gle and he will never be the same, she now knows that he will still be won­der­ful. Thank you to all who helped us through this dif­fi­cult time.
Also, I want to thank every­one who has con­tributed to the V-LIM tur­bine. Ric Mor­risonn, my fab­ri­ca­tor has put together an amaz­ing team of gifted and tal­ented local engi­neers and arti­sans to bring the LIM to real­ity. Peo­ple around the globe have con­tributed valu­able data from mate­r­ial har­monic stress lev­els, torque cal­cu­la­tions and dozens of empir­i­cal obser­va­tions.
Coos County, with­out even know­ing it, has been the recip­i­ent of tremen­dous good­will from all over the world. Engi­neers and sci­en­tists from Ams­ter­dam to Dubai to Bei­jing to Port­land are push­ing for the suc­cess­ful com­ple­tion of the pro­to­type.
Thank you to Jean Ivey, edi­tor of The Sen­tinel for allow­ing me to share an alter­na­tive point of view with her read­ers each week and thank you, dear read­ers, for your kind words and feed­back. Happy New Year everyone!

The superbly done photo essay, mon­tage now show­ing at the New Amer­i­can Art Union in Port­land, Exit Wounds: Com­bat Trauma and the tri­als of home­com­ing, is earn­ing rave reviews. Jim Lommasson’s pho­to­graphic work sur­rounded by pho­tos taken from the vet­er­ans them­selves tells a story that we will not see in main­stream media. Dahr Jamail who has reported from Iraq and is author of ‘Beyond the Green Zone’, writes for IPS News.

PORTLAND, Ore­gon, Nov 4 (IPS) — Artist Jim Lom­mas­son hates war. His exhibit of 1,500 pho­tographs, taken by sol­diers who served in Iraq, brings the war home to the United States, in a way he hopes will help bring it to an end.

“It’s all about the soldier’s lives upon their return home,” Lom­mas­son, a soft-spoken man with kind, yet pierc­ing eyes, told IPS at a recep­tion for his pow­er­ful exhibit in mid-October. “I want peo­ple to lis­ten to the sol­diers. I want them to sup­port the vet­er­ans, and hear what they have to say about Iraq, and what they’ve done to civilians.”

The pho­tographs, hand­picked from thou­sands brought home on lap­tops by sol­diers who served in the occu­pa­tion of Iraq, are grouped together on two walls. Col­lages of pho­tos sur­round larger pho­tos of the sol­dier who took them, along with quotes from inter­views Lom­mas­son con­ducted with them over the last year.

“Mom, I wouldn’t wish war on my worst enemy,” reads one photo. Nearby it are pho­tos of bombs explod­ing, Iraqi chil­dren peer­ing at the pho­tog­ra­pher, and another photo taken through the scope of what looks like a sniper’s scope, with the cross-hairs square on the head of an Iraqi man stand­ing in a doorway.

Dahr Jamail was a pan­elist with me at the Win­ter Sol­dier event hosted by PDX Peace last month. Jamail also reports for Democ­racy Now!

My son, John, an Iraq com­bat vet­eran spoke to about 200 peo­ple attend­ing a Cal­i­for­nia col­leges regents meet­ing today. The schools are look­ing for ways to sup­port return­ing vet­er­ans, par­tic­u­larly those with PTSD and TBI and help them inte­grate from the mil­i­tary into school life.
These last two days I have been attend­ing con­fer­ences put on at the Bay Area Hos­pi­tal relat­ing to rec­og­niz­ing and treat­ing PTSD and TBI and will be report­ing on it for the Sen­tinel. John, on the right in the pic­ture above, was asked to speak by the dean of the school he is attend­ing, about the bar­ri­ers and obsta­cles fac­ing vet­er­ans today. It is a joy to see him doing so well and he is sure work­ing hard at con­quer­ing his demons.

My Marine son, John entered the inpa­tient treat­ment pro­gram for PTSD at the Rose­burg VA Hos­pi­tal last week and I vis­ited with him yes­ter­day. John was upbeat, looked healthy and is in a group with nine other vet­er­ans, five Viet­nam and four other Iraq vet­er­ans. He is very enthu­si­as­tic about the pro­gram and I want to share with all the well wish­ers how he is doing.

We had din­ner at a Thai restau­rant and John shared bits and pieces about his daily life which includes inten­sive group ther­apy, med­ica­tion man­age­ment and med­ical treat­ment for ongo­ing injuries or health issues. John rounds out his day by work­ing out, going for a run and shoot­ing pool with the other vets.

Many of my friends have been to and rec­om­mended this pro­gram which lasts 37 days to every return­ing vet­eran. It is encour­ag­ing that half of the par­tic­i­pants are young vet­er­ans but impor­tant to note that our Viet­nam vets have endured their pain many with­out treat­ment for decades. John’s clos­est friend there, he calls him ‘old man’ is 62, been through seven mar­riages and mul­ti­ple jobs like so many oth­ers and this is his first entry into treat­ing his PTSD. It only took forty years.

Prob­a­bly the most encour­ag­ing yet bit­ter­sweet moment that came from my visit is that John is now able to accept that he will never be able to have the life he would have expected and that he wanted in terms of jobs and other things many of us take for granted. How­ever he real­izes that he can still have a ful­fill­ing life and develop his strengths, learn to man­age his life and his rela­tion­ships with oth­ers while learn­ing to cope with the rav­ages of PTSD.

For some time now he has been con­sid­er­ing jour­nal­ism and pho­tog­ra­phy as a career. We both agree that his life expe­ri­ences would give him a unique per­spec­tive to the top­ics he would cover and still allow him to work within lim­its that don’t intrude tasks he finds hard to cope with.

If you know a return­ing vet or a Viet­nam vet­eran or a Gulf War 1 vet­eran, please rec­om­mend this pro­gram to them. It may start them on a path to under­stand­ing and comradeship.

It is crush­ing to read sto­ries like this and to see what an ungrate­ful nation we really are. Worse, how we dis­re­gard our vet­er­ans is not recent occurence but has been a blem­ish on our his­tory since the rev­o­lu­tion­ary war. Today, per­haps because of the evo­lu­tion of wars and the advent of impro­vised explo­sive devices and repeated deploy­ments, vet­er­ans of Iraq and Afghanistan are becom­ing home­less at a much faster rate than Viet­nam era vets.

For as long as the United States has sent its young men — and later its young women — off to war, it has watched as a seg­ment of them come home and lose the bat­tle with their own mem­o­ries, their own scars, and wind up with­out homes.

The Civil War pro­duced thou­sands of wan­der­ing vet­er­ans. Fre­quently addicted to mor­phine, they were known as “tramps,” search­ing for jobs and, in many cases, lit­er­ally still tend­ing their wounds.

More than a decade after the end of World War I, the “Bonus Army” descended on Wash­ing­ton — demand­ing imme­di­ate pay­ment on ben­e­fits that had been promised to them, but payable years later — and were routed by the U.S. military.

And, most pub­licly and per­haps most painfully, there was Viet­nam: Tens of thou­sands of war-weary vet­er­ans, infa­mously rejected or for­got­ten by many of their own fel­low citizens.

Now it is hap­pen­ing again, in small but grow­ing numbers.

The pat­tern of self-destructiveness that per­me­ates com­bat vet­er­ans is much more under­stood now. Med­ically, it is rec­og­nized that high lev­els of stress hor­mones shrink the hip­pocam­pus and impair the vet­er­ans mem­ory and abil­ity to focus, both cru­cial to main­tain­ing a job. Today, in addi­tion to PTSD many vet­er­ans suf­fer from trau­matic brain injury (TBI) from IEDs which lead to many of the same behav­ioral and cog­ni­tive dif­fi­cul­ties that com­pli­cate hold­ing a job. Yet, it is hap­pen­ing again, just like other wars we are cast­ing our vet­er­ans to the wind.

Peo­ple who have stud­ied post­war trauma say there is always a lengthy gap between com­ing home — the time of parades and back­slaps and “The Boys Are Back in Town” on the local FM sta­tion — and the moments of utter dark­ness that leave some of them homeless.

In that time, usu­ally a period of years, some vet­er­ans focus on the hor­rors they saw on the bat­tle­field, or the friends they lost, or why on earth they them­selves deserved to come home at all. They self-medicate, develop addic­tions, spi­ral down.

How — or per­haps the bet­ter ques­tion is why — is this hap­pen­ing again?

“I really wish I could answer that ques­tion,” says Anthony Belcher, an out­reach super­vi­sor at New Direc­tions, which con­ducts monthly sweeps of Skid Row in Los Ange­les, iden­ti­fy­ing home­less vet­er­ans and try­ing to help them get over addictions.

“It’s the same ques­tion I’ve been ask­ing myself and every­one around me. I’m like, wait, wait, hold it, we did this before. I don’t know how our soci­ety can allow this to hap­pen again.”

Amer­ica should be ashamed of the way they treat their vet­er­ans and we should all be walk­ing the river banks and offer­ing to help them where we can. Read the whole arti­cle here