Salon debuts a new series this week. Death in the USA: The Army's Fatal Neglect looks specifically at the problem of returning Iraq and Afghanistan vets. My hope is that the series will effect real change in the way that the government cares for its returning vets.

It's not the first time I've tried to shine my own feeble light on this issue.
I speak from experience from 30 years ago, and now, in some nightmarish déjà vu, I'm hearing the same stories from friends and students.

I was 17 when I met an older man who was charming, brilliant, and troubled. It was part of what drew me to him. When he allowed himself to speak about his experiences in Viet Nam, where he lost most of his leg, I wanted to heal him with my body, with my youth, with my hope. What I couldn't change were the ghosts that lived in his head, ghosts that were only assuaged by fifths of Jameson's. (Flashback: I remember going to see a movie knowing he had secreted Jameson's into his jacket pocket.)

At night, after a dinner out, we would walk for miles through the city, him taking swigs off the whiskey, me trying to distract him with other things.
The government had originally given him 90 percent disability due to the permanent, painful limp that marked him as one of the walking wounded.

During a spate of Reagan budget cuts, he was cut down to 10 percent disability, so he had to start working again.

We worked opposite hours. He worked as an R.N. during the dayshift; I was working the dinner to bar-closing shift at a restaurant. A few hours before I would get off work, he'd come sit in the bar, and hammer back shots.

He wouldn't talk about what lived in his head. All he would tell me is that he fantasized about killing those who had sent him there. He told me stories that sometimes, made me think I should contact the police. But I wouldn't do that to him. Usually, as he got more and more drunk, the threats seemed more and more impotent.

Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA" frequently played in the house. I would come home from work, and he would have the earphones connected to the stereo, yelling along with the Boss, pissing rage into the air, sending the cats hiding under the beds. Sometimes, I admit, it was easier to deal with him when he was drunk.

We argued many times about him going to see a counselor. No way, he would say. The VA wouldn't cover it, would barely acknowledge that it had a problem. In the years following the end of the Viet Nam war, killed themselves at a horrific rate, adding to the carnage of those  who died in conflict. And the government did what? …..

It is 30 years later. The stories are everywhere. You have only to hit "google news" and plug in "iraq veteran suicide" and they pop up. Lots of men in small towns. The stories similar. Previous suicide attempts, ignored, wives who begged to get their husbands helped, ignored. But the government was happy to supply the honor guard and the flag for the casket.

I am haunted these days by the women I know who are dealing with PTSD.  A few months ago, I wrote about a friend of mine.

She told me the story over a meal. Her voice was calm but controlled, the way we tell each other stories when something hurts. It's like watching a frozen river right about the time of the thaw; at some point, the ice is going to crack and all that pent-up energy is going to come pouring down in a surge that will knock down bridges and flood the banks, and sweep people away who are naïve about the thaw.
It was about her brother. Her beloved brother. Proud Marine who had served two tours in Iraq. Her fun-loving brother who had been the heart of his family, made everybody laugh, loved his wife passionately, loved his country.
"He sits in the house all day and drinks," she says. "He used to go down to the VFW at night, to talk to the guys, get some perspective, be able to tell his stories without judgment. But some assholes have decided to come into the VFW and harass the vets, and now he has nowhere to go."
She hates the war. She was against it from the start, but she loves her brother, and so, when he went, she worried over him, supported his decision even when she thought it was wrong. That's what big sisters do. We look out for our little brothers, even when we don't agree with them.

Yeah me and Frankie laughin' and drinkin'
Nothin' feels better than blood on blood
Takin' turns dancin' with Maria as the band
Played "Night of the Johnstown Flood"

I catch him when he's strayin' like any brother would
Man turns his back on his family well he just ain't no good


"He's built a museum, you know," she says. "He's written to all of these soldiers, asked them to send him stuff. He's got a room full of it now, and he just goes and sits in there."

I sat with her that day, and I told her my story, and I urged her to urge her brother to get help. But we both know he won't. Why? Because of things I've written about before: to admit that you are haunted by images of war is to admit yourself to be less than a man, less the good soldier, less the warrior who is able to kill with impunity and wipe the memory from his brain.

ARE YOU A PUSSY?

In Benjamin and de Yoanna's excellent opening article, they have a copy of the "go to the doctor" note a service member gets when they ask to go see someone. It's all about making sure that men know that real men don't have these feelings. That men who can't handle war are women—with all the negative, weak, pussified implications of what woman represents in war. The hole. The danger. Best not to let the domestic into the soldier's life: it will make him think about what he is doing.

And in one of those stories that you would have to see to believe (but not comprehend), when Adam Lieberman attempted suicide, and wrote graffiti on federal property, his mother painted over the graffiti to keep the government from prosecuting her son. For graffiti. 

PTSD is a health issue, a crisis issue, a national tragedy, and, as I have said for the past few days, PTSD is a feminist issue. It's a feminist issue for two reasons: non-treatment of PTSD is still rooted in the idea that these men do not need help for their injured psyches; and the victims of PTSD are the families: the men who commit suicide, the abused children, the murdered spouses.

I hoped that the story I heard this summer was going to be the last one I was going to hear. Instead, several weeks ago, I had a female student in my office. I've known her for about a year. Last year, her brother was in Iraq. At the time, she showed me his extra set of dogtags, that she never took off, because they were exceptionally close, and every day, every day, she worried that something would happen to him over there.

When she came to see me a few weeks ago, she looked shell-shocked. Her brother was home. He wouldn't talk to her, and when she tried to get him to talk to her, he called her a "stupid cunt" and told her to fuck off. Her brother has stopped talking to everyone in her family. He's drinking heavily. She's bewildered. Where did her brother go?

As she talked, I felt a flood of memories. This past summer. 30 years ago. Young women trying to heal boys who went off to war and came back as unrecognizable.

"I've taken his dogtags off," she confessed. "It's too painful." And then she began to cry.