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AudibleNod OP t1_iy4loxn wrote

>Brookshire said VA’s leaders have been unwilling to have the “difficult conversation” about racial bias. In 2017, the agency showed interest in assessing links between race and PTSD disability claims, but the effort was shelved due to staff shortages, according to Yale’s assessment of VA records.

*emphasis mine

+++++

A federal hiring freeze imposed by President Trump on Monday affects thousands of open jobs at the Department of Veterans Affairs, despite the half-million veterans still waiting longer than a month for VA appointments.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/01/24/trump-hiring-freeze-includes-veterans-affairs/96999464/

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SnapCrackleMom t1_iy4ndz0 wrote

I couldn't understand how any veteran voted for Trump the first time, let alone the second time.

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No___ImRight t1_iy4ozc9 wrote

I've talked to tons of vets who will rail on Trump all day long (because if we're honest, he's low-hanging fruit)

Came down to most of them voting for "not a Democrat" every time.

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SnapCrackleMom t1_iy4rtpp wrote

I'm a vet and I really thought after Trump made fun of John McCain for being a Prisoner of War, he would never win.

I'm a Democrat and it's not like I agreed with most of McCain's political stances but for God's sake the man dedicated his entire adult life to serving his country. He was held captive for 5-1/2 years, tortured, and permanently disabled.

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spinereader81 t1_iy5eozp wrote

Well Trump would've served too, if it weren't for those pesky bone spurs! /s

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Freexscsa t1_iy4q4yc wrote

I am a vet and have a lot of good friends at the VFW as well we tend to all be democrats I don't think that's as cut and dried as you think.

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AudibleNod OP t1_iy4nzbg wrote

Pick a people group not aligned by political affiliation or physical appearance and you're very likely to find something serious DJT did as president to strip them of a government program or find a way to demean them.

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Frmr-drgnbyt t1_iy7m20q wrote

Ditto. Trump was/is so blatantly and openly anti-American that I just can't fathom any veteran supporting him.

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Doge_Of_Wall_Street t1_iy62pfe wrote

So I’m a Veteran, and a Republican but I didn’t vote for Trump any of the 4 times he was on my ballot (2 primaries and 2 generals).

If this next election ends up being Trump v. Biden, I’m voting Trump because of what Biden did in Afghanistan. When Trump left office, we had 18 months of zero casualties, only 2,500 troops there. After Biden, we have a generational leap backward in women’s rights, LGBTQ rights, public executions and the whole country has been plunged into poverty and famine.

I don’t like Trump for all the reasons that have been mentioned ad nauseam, but I’ll take mean tweets over Biden’s body count any day.

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SnapCrackleMom t1_iy69qzp wrote

I agree that Biden was wrong on Afghanistan. But the leaps backward are due in large part to Trump's Supreme Court appointments, aren't they?

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Doge_Of_Wall_Street t1_iy6as3r wrote

How many women have died from Trump’s SC picks? Let’s be generous and call it “a couple”. Pales in comparison to the thousands who have died thanks to Biden’s Afghan withdraw.

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SnapCrackleMom t1_iy6avzf wrote

Oh I agree, but I'm just saying not all the things you listed are on Biden.

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Doge_Of_Wall_Street t1_iy6g59y wrote

I was mostly referring to Sharia Law which is being imposed on women in Afghanistan. However, I’m pretty sure abortion is also illegal there, as is being gay.

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PotatoMurderer t1_iy6qo92 wrote

You know that Trump negotiated and made the deal with the Taliban about the withdrawal right? Which in turn forced Biden to withdraw the troops when he took over coz the deadline was already set in stone. I was in Afghanistan from 2019-2020, and the moment those negotiations took place, we were already told that we were highly likely to be the last deployment rotation. (Except covid happened and the negotiated date was 2021 instead of 2020).

The Trump administration did next to nothing in preparation for leaving Afghanistan. If anything, he probably made it worse coz remember when Trump kept refusing to meet with Biden for a proper hand over? Don't act like Trump had no role in this at all.

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Doge_Of_Wall_Street t1_iy71nis wrote

You said it yourself. It wasn’t “set in stone” if it was renegotiated from 2020 to 2021. And even if Biden felt like he was constrained by Trump’s agreement… he reversed all of Trump’s OTHER policies, why not this one? Did we continue to build “the wall” just because Trump had set the wheels in motion? Absolutely not.

Nice try. The withdraw from Afghanistan was 100% on Biden, and the blood shed is on his hands.

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PotatoMurderer t1_iy72rwc wrote

>You said it yourself. It wasn’t “set in stone” if it was renegotiated from 2020 to 2021

You may have misread what I said. What I was trying to say was when the negotiations were taking place, we were given a heads up that it MAY happen to us. But what ended up happening was it was set in 2021 (By Trump), and he set it for when after Biden took office.

>why not this one?

Because it was an Agreement between the US and the Taliban. It was pull out or further escalation from the Taliban because we didn't end up holding our part of the bargain. Coz when I was there, it definitely felt like they at least tried to minimize the rockets in Bagram Airfield, that and I had weeks where I had 0 patients getting flown to the hospital I worked at; where as prior to negotiations and (the actual deal), we were getting rocketed multiple times a day and I was receiving trauma patients a lot. Seems to me that the Taliban at least tried to hold their end of the bargain.

I also never said that it's not on Biden at all. You're acting like it's all on Biden which is dumb coz it's both a fuck up by Trump and Biden. Trump rushed the deal and didn't do anything about it and tried to delay Biden, and Biden didn't really do much about it either after he found out.

Also let's not forget the military's top brass who knew about all of this since day 1 of negotiations.

It's a fuck up by multiple people but you're discounting Trump from all of it which is wrong.

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r090820 t1_iy58o15 wrote

I use the VA, and I am lucky to have healthcare in this country, but it should be universal. Anything related to the military-industrial-complex often uses the 'staff shortages' excuse (among other 'give us more blank-check' excuses). The VA extends the military further into society (and normalizes the human costs of it). the VA is basically a subsidy to the military, under the guise of a different department (CFR 38). The military uses the VA to distance itself from actually being involved with people that it no longer needs, and normalize the human cost of waging endless war.

This is not just regular govt agency funding, it's military-related which is the anti-thesis of public benefit funding. VA embodies all of the negatives of military culture (cover-ups, lack of transparency, waste, exceptionalism, etc etc). If you want universal healthcare, then the VA is not some pre-version of it, the VA is just extending the military into society through other agencies. As military/VA funding has gone up, many other programs (actual social safety net programs) have had funding cuts. Meanwhile, Medicare is a great example of how govt-subsidized healthcare can actually work properly. just expanding medicare (possibly with a separate plan for the needs of the veteran patient population) would be the safest, easiest, and most efficient way to resolve a lot of problems, as well as facilitate the expansion of medicare.

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