Questioning whether Bush does enough for our veterans

On a quiet afternoon last summer, a gaunt man with a bushy, graying beard pulled up a stool at the bar where I worked and asked for a pint and a slice of pizza. His forearms were covered in blue, fading tattoos of one sort of military significance or another. I poured him his beer, and went back to lazily eating bar peanuts. The man, with a haggard, blank expression, ate his food and, halfway through his beer, looked up at me.

"Excuse me, sweetheart," he said, "Can you tell me if I already paid you?"

We stared at one another briefly, wearing matching expressions of confusion.

"I mean," he said helplessly, "have I given you money yet? I can't remember."

I told him that he hadn't given me any money, but that perhaps he had paid one of the other girls on staff. His face went from confused to embarrassed.

"I don't know. It's all right, I'll just pay you again," he said, getting his wallet out. "I was in the Vietnam War, so I've got no short-term memory. This happens to me a lot."

He gingerly got off of his bar stool leaving half a pint, tipped me more than he should have and slowly walked out of the bar.

"Probably drunk," my boss said as we watched him go.

I hadn't thought of this man until this past Monday, when Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe came to campus to drum up student support for John Kerry. Wedged in between his crowd-pleasing jabs at President George W. Bush, he mentioned a disturbing rumor: Bush's proposed one billion dollar cut to the Veterans Affairs budget in 2006, a statistic obtained from a White House memo this summer. Though the 2005 proposed budget will allot a $519 million increase in spending, the subsequent 2006 cut will drop it below the VA's budget for 2004, according to The Washington Post.

It seems that something is terrifyingly wrong with the Bush administration's priorities.

I now think with dismay about the veteran in the bar and wonder what he must have been like as a young man, entering a war zone nearly 40 years ago under similarly muddled pretexts and ambiguous goals. Would he have been in his '20s, like me? Was he well taken care of by the government that sent him into harm's way? When you end up alone in a bar, struggling to remember the last 10 minutes of your "golden years," is it still worth the sacrifices you made for a war that is today widely regarded as a waste?

The soldiers who are dying are from our generation. The median age of those who've been killed in Iraq is 26, and the youngest was 18 years old. These soldiers are our friends, siblings, boyfriends and girlfriends -- our peers. Our generation is being sent away to face death by a presidential administration that will spend to risk them, but not to heal them.

Once the war is over and national attention is diverted, they will slip into obscurity, poorly cared for, poorly compensated and scarred for the rest of their lives, on their skin and in their minds. It's already happening. Nearly 5,000 sick and wounded National Guard and U.S. Army Reserve soldiers from Iraq are being treated hundreds of miles from their families, unlike full-time U.S. Armed Forces soldiers, who are treated at bases near their homes, according to The Associated Press.

No one bothered to plan for the part-time soldiers' return before they were shipped out. Of course, the soldiers are given the option of resigning their active status to go home -- if they forgo their pay.

Though Bush is often quoted as praising their bravery and patriotism, it appears that he is not rolling out the red carpet for their return. He isn't even rolling out a gurney.

Or perhaps he isn't expecting them to come home at all. After all, more and more American soldiers are dying every day -- over 1,000 so far, and 36 in the last two weeks alone. Unfortunately for him, I'm sure the 7,245 Americans wounded in action will have something to say about this. Bush will be present at the parades. He'll make speeches and give out medals. However, physicians don't accept confetti as a means of payment.

I have a vote. I will use it on the candidate most likely to bring the soldiers home and provide them with the brightest future possible. I am grateful for what they're doing. But I don't want to be across the bar giving a veteran my own age a pint on the house, thinking, "This is the only thing I have done to say thank you."

Jessica Lussenhop is a senior English major from St. Paul, Minn. Textual Revolution appears on Fridays.

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