DN Editorial: Battle scars

TODAY is the Veterans Day holiday. But if today is typical in all other respects, 22 American veterans will commit suicide.

That brutal reality - 22 veteran suicides a day, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs - is driven not just by what our vets are asked to withstand on the battlefield, but by our treatment of them once they come home.

In fact, Veterans Day seems increasingly to have become the day we take stock of our failing of our veterans, rather than a day to honor them.

For example, one of the most reported failings is the huge backlog in disability claims being handled by the Department of Veterans Affairs. In March, the backlog of claims that were in the system for more than 120 days peaked at 611,073 claims, according to a Reuters report. The Department of Veterans Affairs managed to make a dent in that backlog, processing 200,000 claims. V.A. chief Eric Shinseki said that the department is on target to eliminate it by 2015.

Keep in mind: These are claims for veterans returning from war with a host of problems, including posttraumatic stress disorder, brain injuries and other disabilities. Any wait for help is horrendous, but the wait time on many claims is unconscionable: in some large cities like Philadelphia, vets wait for over a year for claims to be processed. (And a recent Washington Post report suggests that the race to clean up the claims backlog is creating a large new backlog in appeals.) Part of the delays are due to antiquated systems in the Veterans Affairs office, with the majority of paperwork still in hard copy.

The state of veterans affairs is shameful in other respects, too. Just as the poverty rate overall has risen, the number of veterans in poverty has seen increases: from 5.4 percent in 2007 to 7 percent in 2010, according to a 2011 Joint Economic Committee report chaired by Sen. Bob Casey. The economic troubles that have hit Americans hard in the last few years also have hit veterans, despite attempts in Congress to provide employer incentives for hiring vets. In fact, in the report's words, the Great Recession made "the last 10 years a lost decade" for many young veterans.

And lawmakers in Congress and in Harrisburg, who prefer to think of poor people as lazy and undeserving, should remember that the cuts they make to social services, such as in Medicaid or food stamps, are going to be hitting veterans, too.

Rather than slashing help, Congress should consider passing a law that would prohibit any further military engagements until all the vets that we are failing get some help, including disability and full employment. How can we be so dismissive of the lives of the people we ask to fight on our behalf? If we're not equipped to handle our military when they return home - and much of the current claims backlog is driven by vets recently returning from Afghanistan and Iraq - we should think twice before sending them in harm's way in the first place.

Maybe someday we can use Veterans Day to truly honor their service to us, instead of an annual tally of how shamefully we treat them.