Finding The Enemy at Walter Reed

American troops have always had a lot of trouble finding the enemy in Iraq. Before the surge, the Army's basic strategy in Baghdad was to drive around Baghdad (DAB) and wait for someone to attack them.

But Disabled veterans did not have much trouble finding the enemy at Building 18 in Walter Reed Hospital.

It was them.

According to Paul Krugman's article in today's Lexington Herald-Leader (sorry no link available because of NYT policy):

"the administration is breaking longstanding promises of lifetime health care to those who defend out nation. Two months before the invasion of Iraq, the Veterans administration, which previously offered care to all veterans, introduced severe new restrictions on who is entitled to enroll in its health care system . . . So when you hear stories of veterans who spend months or years fighting to get the care they deserve, trying to prove that their injuries are service related, remember this: All this red tape was created not by the inherent inefficiency of government bureaucracy, but by the Bush administration's penny-pinching."

Surprisingly for such a good economist, Krugman doesn't fully get what's going on here. For Krugman, the point is the analogy with FEMA's performance with Katrina. He focuses on the appointment of an unqualified lobbyist as Secretary of the Army, the ensuring outsourcing of Walter Reed services to IAP Worldwide Services and the departure of skilled government personnel as the source of the incompetence at the Walter Reed hospital complex. This is bad enough as far as it goes.

However, services at Walter Reed were not only privatized, Walter Reed Hospital also began to act like an insurance company. Just as Allstate and State Farm insurance companies treated customers involved in car crashes as adversaries and bullied them into accepting low-ball settlements or face years of litigation, the privatized services at Walter Reed have been treating disabled veterans as adversaries when they apply for health care. They delay the acceptance of veterans into long-term treatment, warehouse them in a crumbling facility to encourage them to leave, and then pretty much ignore them.

Calling the treatment of disabled veterans at Walter Reed depressing, disgusting, and outrageous doesnt' go nearly far enough. Given that the war in Iraq is a monumental failure, American society and the government owe a special debt to the soldiers we've put in harms way and a special love to them as we carry out our obligations. Given all the embedded journalists and television coverage of the war, almost all Americans have a detailed knowledge of the dangers that our troops have faced in Iraq. As a result, we should have a special affection for troops who have served our goals and exercise an enhanced care with the physical and emotional difficulties of surviving troops now that they're home. Likewise, our feeling for the troops should be enhanced by the Bush administration's foolishness and incompetence in waging the war. The Bush administration might have wasted their health, but everyone involved should do their best to ensure that their recoveries aren't equally wasted.

The Bush administration has identified returning disabled veterans as their enemies. That must not be allowed to stand.