The War Comes Home: Washington's Battle against America's Veterans / Edition 1

by Aaron Glantz

Overview

The War Comes Home is the first book to systematically document the U.S. government's neglect of soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Aaron Glantz, who reported extensively from Iraq during the first three years of this war and has been reporting on the plight of veterans ever since, levels a devastating indictment against the Bush administration for its bald neglect of soldiers and its disingenuous reneging on their benefits. Glantz interviewed more than one hundred recent war veterans, and here he intersperses their haunting first-person accounts with investigations into specific concerns, such as the scandal at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. This timely book does more than provide us with a personal connection to those whose service has cost them so dearly. It compels us to confront how America treats its veterans and to consider what kind of nation deifies its soldiers and then casts them off as damaged goods.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520266049
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	01/15/2009
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	5.36(w) x 7.96(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Aaron Glantz, an independent journalist whose work has appeared in The Nation and The Progressive and on Democracy Now!, is the author of How America Lost Iraq.

Table of Contents

List of Resource Boxes
Preface: Returning Home from Iraq
Acknowledgments

PART I COMING HOME

1 A Soldier Comes Home 3
2 Trying to Adjust 16
3 A Different Kind of Casualty 28

PART II FIGHTING THE PENTAGON

4 The Scandal at Walter Reed 49
5 Coming Together 61
6 Education 69
7 Drugs, Crime, and Losing Your Benefits 86
8 Losing Your Benefits—Personality Disorder 95

PART III FIGHTING THE VA

9 Meet the Bureaucracy 105
10 Didn’t Prepare to Treat the Wounded 118
11 More Bureaucracy 129

PART IV THE DOWNWARD SPIRAL
DRUGS, CRIME, HOMELESSNESS, AND SUICIDE

12 Crime 143
13 Homeless on the Streets of America 156
14 Suicide 167
15 Suicide after the War 176

PART V FIGHTING BACK

16 A History of Neglect 193
17 Winning the Battle at Home 208

Postscript: The War Inside 218
Afterword 227
Notes 229
Index

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"A breathtaking rebuke to government hypocrisy and an overdue contribution to gaining critical public awareness of this official neglect."—Publishers Weekly

"Aaron Glantz puts himself at the forefront of those who are bringing this new generation of veterans into public view."—San Francisco Chronicle

"Sharply drawn examples and evidence-based judgments render all three stories highly readable."—Choice

"Does what no professional journalist has done heretofore. . . . Powerfully compelling yet simply rendered."—Huffingtonpost.com

Editorial Reviews

Aaron Glantz puts himself at the forefront of those who are bringing this new generation of veterans into public view.

San Francisco Chronicle

Does what no professional journalist has done heretofore. . . . Powerfully compelling yet simply rendered.

Huffingtonpost.com

Sharply drawn examples and evidence-based judgments render all three stories highly readable.

Choice

“Aaron Glantz puts himself at the forefront of those who are bringing this new generation of veterans into public view.

San Francisco Chronicle

This exposé of the treatment meted out to American veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan is a breathtaking rebuke to government hypocrisy and an overdue contribution to gaining critical public awareness of this official neglect. Glantz (How America Lost Iraq), who covered the American occupation of Iraq, offers a thorough account of the plight U.S. vets face back home-from the understaffed Veterans Administration perversely geared to saving money at the expense of vets in dire need of help, to concomitant medical and social ills, including undiagnosed brain injuries and the too frequent perils of homelessness, crime and suicide. There is also grassroots resistance and mutual aid, including the eventual passage of the post 9/11 GI Bill of Rights in May 2008, fiercely opposed by the Bush administration and the Republican Congress (including John McCain). Glantz fleshes out his narrative with the voices and powerful stories of vets, their families and advocates, while helpfully including a host of resources and services for veterans. Glantz also places their experience in a longer, dismal history of government neglect, while backing up his assertion that "the Bush administration has never been seriously interested in helping veterans" with damning evidence. (Jan.)

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Publishers Weekly