Thousands and thousands of native American and Hawai’ian people today are homeless and there is a direct relationship between the expanding U.S. military occupation and toxic pollution of Hawai’i and the homelessness and ill-treatment of Hawai’ian people. Been on a Hawai’ian vacation lately? Oahu is repeatedly circled, all day long, by black helicopters: the entire island has become a huge military base where uranium weaponry used on shooting ranges has contaminated the environment. Homeless Hawai’ian people are everywhere, and everywhere mistreated. Tourism masks the militarism in Hawai’i.
According to the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans, the U. S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) says that the vast majority of the nation’s homeless veterans are single, most come from poor, disadvantaged communities, 45% suffer from mental illness, and half have substance abuse problems. America’s homeless veterans have served in World War II, Korean War, Cold War, Vietnam War, Grenada, Panama, Lebanon, Operation Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan), Operation Iraqi Freedom, or the military’s anti-drug cultivation efforts in South America. Forty-seven percent of homeless veterans served during the Vietnam Era. More than 67% served our country for at least three years and 33% were stationed in a war zone.[8]
It is very telling that no one keeps national records on homeless veterans. Not only does the American war machine create homeless people, it punishes the victims. The Pentagon does not have any problem counting enlistees. This shows yet again how the U.S. government operates — irresponsibly, with no responsibility for the Veterans who have served this country at their own peril. Irresponsibility is the big problem of the United States and the big problem of the citizenry: a refusal to take responsibility and a refusal to be held accountable for our actions and for the actions of our government and corporations.
“Polls show that seventy percent of all Americans are opposed to the Iraq war and want it ended,” says Doug Wight, “yet what percent are willing to take a strong civil disobedience action to help make that happen? Every day I have to deal with the rage and sadness of these two terrible wars and the shame and responsibility that comes with it because it is my beloved country that is inflicting these murderous wars on innocent people.”
The National Coalition on Homeless Veterans offers VA estimates that nearly 200,000 veterans are homeless on any given night and some 400,000 experience homelessness over the course of a year. One of the main reasons for Veteran homelessness is post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD): a debilitating and sometimes deadly effect of the lasting trauma that war inflicts on soldiers and civilians everywhere.
This story of the U.S. government’s treatment of Veterans is a unconscionable scandal.
In weighing one’s quick moral judgment of Doug Wight’s actions one should take such facts into account and ask: where is the moral high ground? Who are the big hypocrites here?
The newspapers reported that Doug Wight moved to Massachusetts to be part of the intentional community, Sirrius, in Shutesbury, MA, “founded in 1979 with the goal of creating a self-sustaining, ecologically-friendly community.”
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