The War on America’s Military Veterans, Waged with SWAT Teams, Surveillance and Neglect
Image Source: Change.org
Just in time for Memorial Day, we’re once
again being treated to a generous serving of praise and grandstanding by
politicians and corporations eager to go on record as being supportive
of our veterans. Patriotic platitudes aside, however, America has done a
deplorable job of caring for her veterans.
We erect monuments for those who die while serving in the military, yet
for those who return home, there’s little honor to be found.
The plight of veterans today is deplorable,
with large numbers of them impoverished, unemployed, traumatized
mentally and physically, struggling with depression, thoughts of suicide, and marital stress, homeless
(a third of all homeless Americans are veterans), subjected to sub-par
treatment at clinics and hospitals, and left to molder while their
paperwork piles up within Veterans Administration (VA) offices.
While President Obama has now declared that
he “will not stand” for the mistreatment of veterans under his watch,
the time for words is long past. As Slate political
correspondent John Dickerson observed, these inexcusable delays
represent “a failure of one of the most basic transactions government is
supposed to perform: keeping a promise to those who were asked to
protect our very form of government.”
Then again, as I detail in my book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State,
the government has been breaking its promises to the American people
for a long time now, starting with its most sacred covenant to uphold
and defend the Constitution. Yet if the government won’t abide by its
commitment to respect our constitutional rights to be free from
government surveillance and censorship, if it completely tramples on our
right to due process and fair hearings, and routinely denies us protection from roadside strip searches and militarized police, why should anyone expect the government to treat our nation’s veterans with respect and dignity?
Indeed, in recent years, military servicemen and women—many of whom are decorated—have found themselves increasingly targeted
for surveillance, censorship, threatened with incarceration or
involuntary commitment, labeled as extremists and/or mentally ill, and
stripped of their Second Amendment rights, all for daring to voice their concerns about the alarming state of our union and the erosion of our freedoms.
For example, a Department of Homeland
Security (DHS) program dubbed Operation Vigilant Eagle tracks military
veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, and characterizes them as
extremists and potential domestic terrorist threats because they may be
“disgruntled, disillusioned or suffering from the psychological effects
of war.”
Unfortunately, as we’ve seen in recent years,
the problem with depicting veterans as potential enemy combatants is
that any encounter with a military veteran can escalate very quickly
into an explosive and deadly situation—at least, on the part of law enforcement.
For example, Jose Guerena,
a Marine who served in two tours in Iraq, was killed in 2011 after an
Arizona SWAT team kicked open the door of his home during a mistaken
drug raid and opened fire. Apart from his military background, Guerena
had had no prior criminal record, and the police found nothing illegal
in his home.
John Edward Chesney, a 62-year-old Vietnam
veteran, was killed by a SWAT team allegedly responding to a call that
the Army veteran was standing in his apartment window waving what looked
like a semi-automatic rifle. SWAT officers fired 12 rounds into
Chesney’s apartment window. It turned out that the gun Chesney
reportedly pointed was a “realistic-looking mock assault rifle.”
Ramon Hooks,
a 25-year-old Iraq war veteran, was using an air rifle gun for target
practice outside when a Homeland Security Agent, allegedly house
shopping in the area, reported him as an active shooter. Hooks was
arrested, his air rifle pellets and toy gun confiscated, and charges
filed against him for “criminal mischief.”
Although no toy guns were involved in Brandon Raub’s
case, his fact scenario is even more chilling, given that he was
targeted for exercising his First Amendment rights on Facebook. The
26-year-old decorated Marine actually found himself interrogated by
government agents about his views on government corruption, arrested
with no warning, labeled mentally ill for subscribing to so-called
“conspiratorial” views about the government, detained against his will
in a psych ward for standing by his views, and isolated from his family,
friends and attorneys.
On August 16, 2012, a swarm of local police,
Secret Service and FBI agents handcuffed and transported Raub to police
headquarters, then to a medical center, where he was held against his
will due to alleged concerns that his Facebook posts were “terrorist in
nature.” Meanwhile, in a kangaroo court hearing that turned a deaf ear
to Raub’s explanations about the fact that his Facebook posts were being
read out of context, Raub was sentenced to up to 30 days’ further
confinement in a psychiatric ward. Thankfully, The Rutherford Institute
came to Raub’s assistance and brought about his release. Even so, within
days of Raub being seized and forcibly held in a VA psych ward, news
reports started surfacing of other veterans having similar experiences.
A federal judge actually dismissed Raub’s
lawsuit challenging the government’s “Operation Vigilant Eagle” campaign
and its increasing view of veterans as potential domestic terrorists as
“far-fetched.” Yet what may sound far-fetched to the courts is a grim
reality to Americans who are daily being targeted for daring to exercise
their constitutional rights to speak their minds, criticize the
government, and defend themselves and their families against
over-reaching government surveillance and heavy-handed police tactics.
It’s ironic, isn’t it, that we raise our
young people to believe that it is their patriotic duty to defend
freedom abroad by serving in the military, then when they return home,
bruised and battle-scarred and suddenly serious about defending their
freedoms at home, we treat them like terrorists. Then again, perhaps
it’s not so much ironic as it is tragic and pathetic—a sad tribute,
indeed, to those willing to put their lives on the line.
Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead [send him mail] is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. He is the author of A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State and The Change Manifesto (Sourcebooks).
Copyright © 2014 The Rutherford Institute
Courtesy of LewRockwell.com
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