I Don't Think Abe's WORDS Are the Problem

Tweet

Anytime I see "VA" in a news feed I'll read the story. Yesterday I saw an article and read it. All I can say is oy. A number of women's veterans groups are asking the Department of Veterans Affairs to change their motto. If you didn't know, the VA's motto comes from President Abraham Lincoln's second inaugural address, delivered six weeks before he was assassinated. In his speech, dealing with the ending of the Civil War, Lincoln said: With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow, and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations. The VA has adopted the line, "To care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan," as their official motto. Now, Honest Abe said those words in 1865. It's 2018. I don't know if Lincoln even thought he'd be remembered 150-plus years after the fact, never mind the notion that one of his speeches would provide a motto for a government agency. And, think about it: we were dealing with the notion of slaves being freed at the time, a completely new concept. Women? Their right to vote was still forty five years away. So, obviously, people who are offended by masculine pronouns want Abe's words altered to better reflect the VA's care. "The motto is symbolic of overall challenges," Allison Jaslow, director of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, told the military paper Stars and Stripes. "They're missing the point that women don't feel comfortable at the VA." Well, as a woman veteran, I can tell you that Abe's words aren't the problem. The problem is the government bureaucracy that treats all veterans -- male, female, gay, straight, Christian, Jew, atheist, white, black, natural-born citizen or immigrant -- the same way: POORLY. The VA sent out an e-mail recently boasting that new claims will be processed within 30 days. Bravo. My claim from 2013, meanwhile still sits, gathering dust and spider webs. And no, they aren't "singling" me out because I'm a woman. My brother is still waiting for a knee replacement for a service-connected injury he suffered in 1980. We need our veterans advocacy groups to stand up and help us. The issues that cause "problems" at the VA hospitals (when I first got out in the mid-80s, there was a OB/GYN clinic for two hours ONE DAY A MONTH) aren't the words that President Lincoln uttered 153 years ago. It's more a reflection of the greater problem with the VA: reluctance, hesitancy, and/or failure to acknowledge problems. If you doubt that, just look at how long it took the government to acknowledge that there were health issues associated with Agent Orange.