Justice and the V.A.
by Joseph L. Puente

Veterans Administration policy states that a patient has the right to complain, verbally or in writing, without fear of retaliation. Trusting this policy, a veteran submitted a complaint regarding patient care.

His complaint was answered with a criminal charge by the person he was complaining about and backed up by that individual’s coworkers and employers, VA contractors.

Seven months later, he sat in a court room and listened as witnesses perjured themselves, bearing false witness against him all because he exercised his rights as a VA patient.

But what hurt him most was that these were people he trusted. Some he even admired. One he went to church with.

This veteran had appealed to everyone he could think of for assistance from the Patient Advocate at the VA Medical Center to bureaucrats up and down the VA administrative hierarchy as well as numerous elected representatives, his cries for help falling mostly on deaf ears.

It is said that justice is blind. I think it’s because truth is sacrificed for arguments. In the courts, truth is irrelevant and unneeded as long you have solidarity. If you’ve got your stories straight, you can lie all you want. That oath to tell the truth and nothing but the truth means nothing. And this is all legal. That’s how the best judicial system in the world works.

But this isn’t just about the peculiarities of the American justice system. The requirements of the prosecution were met, albeit with slanderous and dishonest testimony. The fact that no one would step forward to help a veteran when VA policy was so blatantly violated, speaks volumes about how veterans are regarded in our society, not only by regular citizens, but by the very government entity that is responsible for taking care of them.

Billions of dollars are spent on the “War on Terror,” but the days of calling on citizens to make sacrifices for the good of the war effort are long gone. No one in authority wants to inconvenience the people that have placed them into power. Hence, no calls for rationing gas or recycling scrap metal. Instead, the government tries to rob Peter to pay Paul. Despite a record budget deficit and doublethink claims by the President that “the government’s got plenty of money,” a token effort is made to curb spending by cutting the resources of other agencies that aren’t as critical to the “War Effort” like Education and Veterans Affairs, confirming what has been said before, that our “heroes in uniform” surrender such accolades once they take off the uniform. And VA bureaucrats won’t make an effort to help a veteran in need because to do so would require that they take on a degree of responsibility and the potential, and political, risk of losing their jobs in the name of budgetary considerations or simply the risk of losing whatever power they are perceived to have. And who pays for their inaction? Those with the least amount of power. Veterans.