Political infighting isn’t helping veterans

I am on a mission. I bring this to a social network as I am able to touch many persons. I will also send this to a few newspapers to see if they will print it as a letter to the editor. If anyone believes in this mission, please join me and share the thoughts.

I have been watching the commercials on television, where a country music celebrity speaks about wounded veterans and asks for money or donations in order to help support these individuals. I am not against any organization that helps veterans, wounded, homeless, or not. What I am against is the fact that I am not finding the answer to “why” so many veterans are in need.

I have contacted via letter and email elected officials serving in the United State Congress. I did hear back from one senator, who did not answer my question, but wrote in a typical political response which said nothing.

I want to know why our politicians took us to war, Republican and Democrat alike. We invaded a sovereign nation, which we had never done before. We were able to support the military industrial complex building machines of destruction. The politicians lambasted anyone who would not vote for supplemental spending bills as “not supporting our troops.”

Now we are engaged in the most vicious hate-filled political campaigns I have unfortunately experienced. Why are we not able to take this energy and begin to ask questions for the greater good? Why do we need nonprofit organizations to help our wounded veterans and their families? Why do we forget their widows, widowers and orphans? This angers me, especially since none of the news stations or papers headline this inequity.

This my friends, is one of the greatest scars on our nation. For all those repeating all of the political lies on both sides of the aisle, why not do something positive and ask the question without pointing fingers and saying “you did it too.” Why don’t we hold out politicians accountable for not supporting our veterans? I just heard a former big city mayor making a statement that the president does not love America. Every American should call him on this slander.

The political hatred is out of control. This mayor enjoys taking time to play politics and repeat how he was almost killed on 9/11. I believe he should be supporting and talking about persons who were killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. I believe he should go somewhere on Saturday or Sunday and pay attention to the “book” of religion.

In March 150 years ago, President Abraham Lincoln ended his second inaugural address with these beautiful words:

“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

May we please follow these words of Lincoln and accept the responsibility. Let no politician be reelected should they fail these brave men and women and their families.

Jack Norvell is a veteran living in Monroe.

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