COUNTERING MILITARY RECRUITMENT
Articles: Military Service: Casualties
Postwar life for Iraq, Afghan vets is anything but normal
James Janega and Aamer Madhani, Chicago Tribune
October 29, 2006
CHICAGO - It's been more than three years since Martin Binion navigated minefields and sniper fire as he made his way to Baghdad with a combat assault team in the opening days of the Iraq war.Now the former U.S. Army soldier is trying to make it through the Veterans Affairs system, and Binion, 33, is barely getting by. He has flirted with homelessness, been turned down for more than a dozen jobs, and is trying to be treated for post-traumatic stress disorder.
More than five years after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and two wars later, advocates fear too many young veterans share Binion's difficulty readjusting to life in America.
Hoping to end the pervasive problems faced by earlier generations of veterans in accessing services, the veterans support group Amvets opened a national symposium in Chicago to address issues facing young veterans. The goal is to present Congress with a new set of policy priorities after the November elections.
An online survey of 600 veterans unveiled by the group hinted at what those priorities would be. It found eight in 10 veterans felt more could be done to help troops leave the military and join the civilian workforce. Nearly four in 10 felt underemployed, and two-thirds had trouble accessing disability benefits in a veterans affairs system most agree is overwhelmed to the point that soldiers like Binion have fallen through the cracks.
''When you join the Army, they tell you that they got your back 'till the end,'' Binion said. ''From my experience, it's not been that way.''
Complaints about an underfunded and overburdened VA system are a perennial problem, but some veterans' advocates say a bad situation has been exacerbated by ongoing conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq that have inundated the system with a new and younger generation of veterans looking for help.
Demands for health-care services by veterans have climbed by 34 percent since 2000, while a third of soldiers who returned from Iraq in the first two years of the war required mental health services within a year of ending their deployment, according to the New England Journal of Medicine.
Meanwhile, veterans groups forecast a $1 billion shortfall in health-care funding for veterans in 2007, according to independent analysis by Amvets, Disabled American Veterans, Paralyzed Veterans of America and the Veterans of Foreign Wars.
''When this war started, there was a level of anticipation and planning that was insufficient,'' said Velma Hart, national finance director for Amvets and organizer of the symposium in Rosemont, Ill. ''You're going to have a unique set of circumstances that if you're not geared up beforehand, they're going to overwhelm you. And I think that's what we're starting to see.''
The key to making the transition out of military life is a large support network of family members, friends and service providers, said John Driscoll, communications director for the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans. Without it, veterans leaving the military are beset by interlocking problems of getting new jobs, accessing health benefits and orienting to civilian life, he said.
Left unchecked, the problems build into homelessness, and the first warning flags that veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are showing, he said. His group has already had 400 applications for homeless assistance at its community homeless shelters around the country. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has experienced similar requests.
''The research shows there will be a spike in demand for services. Our concern is we are already seen the beginnings of that, but we have not seen the spike yet,'' Driscoll said.
Among those watched by veterans groups is Binion, an honorably discharged mechanic assigned to one of the first mechanized units to enter Iraq in 2003 following the initial bombardment by U.S. warplanes.
Binion is still haunted by much of what he encountered on the battlefield, including the horrific sight of dismembered bodies, the unbearable stench of dead bodies cooking in the desert sun, and the image of one Iraqi soldier who died while clutching a photo of his family.
The trauma from the experience, Binion said, has led to night sweats, nightmares, depression, a fear of crowds, uncontrollable anger and other behavioral changes that are telltale signs of post-traumatic stress disorder. He is seeing two Veterans Affairs counselors for the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, he said.
When he came home from Iraq two years ago, he found that his infant daughter no longer recognized him and would push away from him when he tried to hold her. When he went to sleep, he sometimes had nightmares in which he dreamed he was under attack. On several occasions, he unknowingly struck his wife while having these nightmares. Binion's marriage ultimately fell apart as a result of these behavioral changes.
The U.S. government, however, denied Binion's claim that he has post-traumatic stress disorder. He is facing the second round of an appeals process that regularly takes four to six months. After two years of moving from one family member's house to another, he has settled in his parents' South Shore home, contributing to their expenses with his $631 in monthly disability pay from the government.
He has applied for veterans set-aside jobs at the CTA, the post office, the water company and elsewhere without luck. To move out of his parents' home, he has applied for a studio apartment at a Catholic Charities facility, where rent would amount to more than half of his disability pay - far too much, he said.
With his G.I. Bill education benefits dwindling and his parents thinking of moving, his future is freighted with uncertainty, and he says the veterans benefits he counts on are locked away in a bureaucracy he calls ''numb'' and ''impersonal.''
''Things are getting worse and worse,'' he said. ''I do what I can. It's not enough.''
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