Still Dead...

Sounds like the title to a fiction piece right? 

It's that time of year where we get a card from the Army Family Outreach group giving their appreciation for Memorial Day and letting us know that there will be a summer get together at some point. 

We call it the "Your Dad's Still Dead" card. 

It's dark humor, but it's ours. 

I've talked about it before. They actually do really good work. Jack has been dead for 17 years and they still reach out once or twice a year. They do not forget. And they have other services we could use if we were interested. If Brent had been a child when his dad died they would have been there to help him with schooling and finding scholarships and using his dad's benefits until he reached majority. They are a good organization as far as what they do. 

Much better than the lip service that our congress people pay to veterans and active duty. The every 2-4 years where they talk about how important they are but then forget as soon as they get in office or retain their office. I've heard it summed up that they are very loyal to the military industrial complex but could give a shit about the actual military service members. And that checks out.

There is a ton of talk about honoring our vets and service members but, spoiler alert, they need a lot more than a "Thank you for your service." 

They need resources. They need counselling. They need home loans and student loans and access to financial planning. They need rehab, both from the physical wear and tear of a lot of those jobs and from the addictions a lot of them end up with. They need access to mental health care that is more than just "deal with it." Their families need help as well. Help reintegrating when the service member comes home from a long tour of duty. Help with moving and how to adjust when you get transferred and have to pull up stakes, again. 

The families need help. The service members themselves need help. 

But the money all goes to weapons manufacturing and companies that build planes the military doesn't even want to use anymore. Oh and into the pockets of the executives of those companies, so not even into the equipment. We wage constant war on our own or by proxy and we make a handful of people very rich doing so. 

Those people have no urge to actually be there for our service members. There is no incentive in that. No reason to point out that thousands of civilians are being slaughtered with our weapons. That a lot of our returning service members will never be whole and okay again as they deal with the moral repercussions of that. When you decide that money is your only goal then people can fuck right off, and you for sure don't want to point out that you are getting obscenely wealthy while killing off those people to the group of people who don't serve yet pay taxes to support you. If you show them what is actually happening they might pressure for a change. Which 17 years after Brent's dad; who served two tours in Vietnam, a tour in Afghanistan and was on his way to Iraq, died I don't see happening. 

But at least we get a lovely "Your Dad's Still Dead" card every year.