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Yahoo
16-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Women Have Served with Honor for Decades. This Administration Can't Erase That History.
The opinions expressed in this op-ed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of If you would like to submit your own commentary, please send your article to opinions@ for consideration. "Ma'am, you are really good at your job, and I've enjoyed working with you," a fellow soldier said to me on my way out of Afghanistan in 2010 after serving a year overseas as a paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne Division. "You still don't belong here, but it's been good," he concluded. That, and much worse, is what I heard as a steady drumbeat during my service in the Army. Women put up with inappropriate and demeaning comments, the challenges and the intimidating moments as the only woman in the room or at the table, because they have grit, determination and -- most importantly -- a sense of patriotism and duty that our military needs. Attempts at erasing the history of military women -- along with people of color and the LGBTQ+ community, for that matter -- are already underway, as a result of an executive order purportedly aimed at eliminating efforts to promote diversity in the military. Erasing history has never made anyone stronger, and will undermine the ability of patriotic Americans to serve. Accounts of incredible, strong women influenced me to join the military. Stories of nurses from every conflict beginning with the Revolutionary War, the Women's Army Corps, the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion and, certainly, those trailblazers who continue to pave the way by serving as Army Rangers and Special Forces are essential examples to women -- whether they serve in uniform or not -- that closed doors can be opened. This legacy of unstoppable women who have worn the cloth of our nation continues to guide me today and will for the rest of my life. From my very first assignment, I was fortunate to have female mentors and leaders whom I looked up to and aspired to emulate. These women not only paved the way for me and my peers, but their leadership shifted the culture in the military. Their leadership and competence helped male counterparts recognize that different perspectives are a strength that is crucial when analyzing situations to develop military strategy on the battlefield. Not only do our female service members make a difference, but they are mission-critical -- women Marines who served on female engagement teams were necessary when forming relationships with tribes in Afghanistan and procuring essential intelligence. Women who serve expand the capabilities of our military. The removal of female general and flag officers is a further setback. Eliminating role models and removing voices at the most senior levels of command jeopardize fair and equal treatment of military personnel. Female senior leaders, by their expertise, work ethic and gravitas, influence their male peers throughout the services and help ensure that every single military service member is treated with the dignity and respect they deserve for raising their right hand and swearing to defend the Constitution of the United States of America. I remember as a truck company commander, a unit that deployed three times to Kuwait and Iraq under my command, having my fellow company commanders (who were all men) literally turn their backs on me when I approached them. I was one of two female company commanders on the base, and I commanded the only deployable company on the installation. Despite the behavior of my peers, I persevered because female leaders I had in my previous assignments had demonstrated that there was a place for me as a leader in the military. So, where will our military be when military women's history is no longer told and female leaders are removed? While recruiting goals were met for the Army in 2024 before the recent purge, a larger percentage than ever before were women. By attempting to delete the inspiring stories, by reversing policies that have made the military a safer and more attractive career choice for women, and by removing senior female leaders who inspire and protect junior service members, not only will our military recruitment numbers decrease, but our military as a whole will suffer. For years and years, there have been efforts to make the military more attractive to women. Those marketing efforts, which used real examples of women serving and making an impact, will continue to drive women to the military, but as senior women are removed and examples of courageous women are erased, young female enlisted and officers most likely will no longer see women as valued members of the military. The number of women who feel empowered to join will decrease. Thankfully, there are organizations such as the Military Women's Memorial and the U.S. Army Women's Foundation that are dedicated to preserving what military women have done both on and off the battlefield, but they will be fighting against forces trying to erase the legacy of women in the military. Diversity does make us stronger, and it was a fundamental component of how the United States was founded. If we want to be more united, we should embrace the things that make us stronger because we are diverse, not use our differences to inflame tensions. We, female service members, must stick together and have our voices heard. We must tell our stories. And for those of us who no longer wear the uniform, we must speak even louder for those who still serve and could face repercussions for speaking up. We all need to reach out to our legislators and demand that they speak up, too. So, to the staff sergeant who told me I didn't belong and any other person who shares this opinion, I, along with every other woman who meets the military's standards, absolutely belong, and we give our great military a strength that can't come from training. It comes from our heart and drive to serve our country. Nothing anyone else says can take that from any of us, and we will not be erased. -- Retired Lt. Col. Michelle L. Horn served in the U.S. Army and now continues her commitment to service through her work at Fisher House Foundation and as a member of the board of directors for the U.S. Army Women's Foundation.
Yahoo
09-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Lessons Not Learned
The opinions expressed in this op-ed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of If you would like to submit your own commentary, please send your article to opinions@ for consideration. As this is being written on the 50th anniversary of the fall of Saigon and the final end of the Vietnam War, that history is being echoed as we are bombing Yemen and using much of the same tactics we employed in the infamous and ineffectual "Rolling Thunder" campaigns of the mid- and late 1960s in Vietnam. This got me wondering whether we have learned anything from our failed military adventures. My old man used to say that we learn more from our failures than we do from our successes. The corollary to that is something that I believe came from British field marshal William Slim: "A lesson learned is not a lesson learned unless you learn it." Although I missed the Vietnam experience, having been commissioned as the war was winding down, I have observed or participated in a number of debacles -- starting with watching the failed Israeli intervention in Lebanon up close as a United Nations observer and ending up as a civilian field adviser in Afghanistan. Let's start with the lessons we thought we learned in Vietnam that have been repeated. When Saigon fell, there was conventional wisdom in Washington that we should never again try nation-building. However, less than a decade later, we and the Israelis were nation-building in Lebanon. In the aftermath of the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut, President Ronald Reagan had the good sense to abandon the mission as ill-advised. Despite this, we were at it again exactly 10 years later, this time in Somalia. After the Black Hawk Down debacle, President Bill Clinton reached the same conclusion as Reagan in Lebanon and closed the door on the mission. Being slow learners, by 2002, we were nation-building in Afghanistan. It took two decades to realize that this was folly. We compounded the disaster with the humiliating spectacle of the cut-and-run operation of 2021 in Kabul. We are still repeating the misperception that wars can be won by airpower alone yet again in Yemen. Beginning with the post-World War II Strategic Airpower Study, the lesson that wars cannot be won solely by airpower has been repeatedly forgotten by successive generations of Air Force and naval aviation strategists. A well-disciplined and ideologically motivated population -- particularly if controlled by an authoritarian regime -- will successfully resist a non-nuclear air campaign. This is particularly true if the air campaign has limited objectives. Shock and awe is a myth that will not go away. Every rule has exceptions. Weak authoritarian regimes that are unpopular with their citizens can be cowed by selective bombing -- as was the case with Muammar Gaddafi in Libya and Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia during the Kosovo conflict -- but Nazi Germany, North Vietnam and the Houthis fall into the former category. They were made of sterner stuff. On May 6, President Donald Trump announced the Houthis would stop shooting at U.S. ships transiting the Bab el-Mandab strait at the mouth of the Gulf of Aden off Yemen, but the Houthis denied it. This is again reminiscent of the days of Rolling Thunder. The Johnson administration would call temporary unilateral halts to the bombing, hoping for a similar response from Hanoi. The North Vietnamese response was to use the pause to replenish their supplies of anti-aircraft missiles. Being unwilling to send ground forces north of the Demilitarized Zone, the Americans would resume bombing. The recent Houthi attack on Israel certainly doesn't look like a peace offering. Some derisively referred to Rolling Thunder as "Colossal Blunder." Today, we no longer have the option to use ground forces to root out and destroy the mobile missile and drone launchers that the Houthis depend on. This would require a sustained amphibious operation that the U.S. is no longer capable of launching due to some unfortunate force-structuring decisions in the past five years that mean the Navy lacks the ships and the Marine Corps the offensive combat power to conduct such an operation. The geography of the Arabian Peninsula precludes the Army from launching an overland campaign without violating the sovereignty of several of Yemen's neighbors or getting permission to stage an incursion from Saudi Arabia. How did we get to this point? Much of it can be attributed to casualty avoidance on the part of civilian leaders. Foes such as the Houthis simply can't threaten the standoff capability of our technologically superior Air Force and Navy. In addition, we have not faced a first-class opponent in a conventional war in eight decades. Much of the problem lies with operational and strategic ignorance on the part of our generals and admirals. The greatest ones have been keen students of military history. This includes Genghis Khan; although illiterate, he hired people to tell him of the battles and campaigns fought by his adversaries. The greats all practiced "recognitional decision-making." They could say, "I remember a reading or hearing of a situation similar to this" and act accordingly. Too many promising officers are sent to think tanks in lieu of military schools to teach them how to succeed on the Washington cocktail circuit rather than developing real warfighting skills. This is only exacerbated by ticket punching and careerism. Those officers who see something wrong are afraid to speak up. Generals who knew that the Afghan evacuation would be awful never put their stars on the line to strenuously object. None of the revolving door of commanders in Afghanistan -- with the possible exception of Gen. David Petraeus -- had the guts to say, "This isn't working." Moral courage cannot be taught in schools, but we desperately need it. Gary Anderson served in Lebanon and Somalia with the Marine Corps. He was a special adviser to the deputy secretary of defense, traveling to Iraq and Afghanistan in that capacity, and served as a State Department field adviser in Iraq and Afghanistan
Yahoo
08-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Access to Care Could Have Saved My Son's Life. Other Vets Should Have a Chance.
The opinions expressed in this op-ed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of If you would like to submit your own commentary, please send your article to opinions@ for consideration. My son was the best person I ever knew. Kind, loving and generous, Logan never met someone who wasn't a friend. Just like his father, Logan wanted to join the military. He had a strong sense of duty and wanted to help people. But I hardly recognized Logan when he came back from service. He struggled with his mental health throughout his time in the Navy, eventually receiving an honorable discharge. He came home reserved, withdrawn, anxious and, unbeknownst to me, had attempted suicide multiple times. At the time, I worked at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Fayetteville, North Carolina, as a pharmacy technician. I knew the VA existed for the very purpose of helping men and women like my son, especially those with disability ratings and mental-health struggles due to their service. I encouraged Logan to seek help, and finally, after years, he agreed to come to the VA and ask for a mental-health appointment. Under the current VA MISSION Act law, the VA has standards in place for how to handle scheduling appointments for mental-health care. They look for an open appointment at the facility, and if they can't get the veteran in to be seen within 20 days, they refer them to outside doctors in the community. The Community Care Program, as it's titled, allows a veteran such as my son to use his VA benefits to see non-VA doctors. Long wait times aren't always an option for mental-health care, so the Community Care Program is often a lifeline veterans can hold onto. Logan told me he was given an appointment, though he didn't tell me when. I was just grateful to the VA and hopeful for his future. But that hope was short-lived. The wait time for his mental-health appointment was five months long. That should have made him eligible for community care, but to my knowledge, nobody from the VA ever contacted Logan about coordinating that care. Two months into waiting for an appointment, Logan took his own life. My only child died waiting for help from the VA that wasn't coming. I believe the VA stands in the way of veterans getting access to community care. It's become a tangled bureaucracy that is focused on itself rather than helping the veteran. That was clear to me in how my son was treated, and then how I was treated after his death. I was held at arm's length, given little information as a next of kin and treated with such coldness that I chose to leave VA employment last year through early retirement. If there is something I can cling to for purpose now, it's that I won't let another mother feel this pain if I can do something about it. My child is gone, but I'll ensure he can still help others, just like he did in his 27 years of life. It starts with giving veterans access to desperately needed care. Even though the Community Care Program is built with standards for veterans to use their benefits to get care outside the VA when wait times are too long, VA administrators have found ways around the law. Veterans are often stuck in the maze of trying to advocate for themselves to get community care, if they even know they have that option. As I've gone through the process of sharing Logan's story, I've been encouraged by members of Congress and organizations such as Concerned Veterans for America who want to make things right for veterans at the VA. In particular, the Veterans' ACCESS Act would make it law that the VA has clear standards for veterans using community care and that the VA communicates those standards with veterans. Two more pieces of this bill, though, are more critical to me. First, the VA would need to create a portal so veterans can self-schedule at the VA or a community care provider. Second, the bill would create a pilot program for veterans that need certain kinds of mental-health-care access to get community care without VA pre-approval first. No need to get a referral from the VA; just go get the help you need. This kind of access could have saved my child's life. It could still save another mother's child. I beg Congress, if you care about veterans, their mental-health struggles and the families who support them, to pass the Veterans' ACCESS Act. Our children's lives depend on it. Veterans and service members experiencing a mental-health emergency can call the Veteran Crisis Line, 988 and press 1. Help also is available by text, 838255, and via chat at Lori Locklear is a former VA employee and mother to Navy veteran Logan Willis, who passed away by suicide in 2022. She lives in the Fayetteville, North Carolina, area where she connected with Concerned Veterans for America, an organization that advocates for expanded health-care choices for veterans, like the Community Care Program, to help get her story heard.
Yahoo
28-04-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Want Efficiency? Fund the VA and Cut the Proven Waste in Privatized Veterans Care
The opinions expressed in this op-ed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of If you would like to submit your own commentary, please send your article to opinions@ for consideration. Faithfully following orders from President Donald Trump's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) office, VA Secretary Doug Collins has announced that he will soon fire tens of thousands of employees at the Veterans Health Administration (VHA). He claims the system is too wasteful, inefficient and costly, and that the private-sector Veterans Community Care Program (VCCP), established under the VA MISSION Act of 2018, is both more cost effective and comparable in quality. That's just not true. VHA health care is, on average, less costly, less wasteful and of higher quality and value than private-sector alternatives. Strengthening -- not decimating -- in-house VHA staffing and infrastructure represents the more fiscally responsible use of taxpayer dollars. It's also what the majority of the 9 million veterans it serves want. When veterans are referred to outside providers through the VCCP, they enter, what Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) accurately described at a June 2023 congressional hearing, as the perfect environment for unnecessary use of high-cost tests, procedures and extra appointments -- all billable to the government. Studies comparing care delivered for a multitude of conditions within and outside the VHA confirm that type of private-sector waste. When ambulances randomly transported veterans to either VHA or private emergency departments, private care cost 21% more -- primarily due to unnecessary electrocardiograms, inpatient admissions, and evaluation and management services with higher reimbursement rates. Diabetic veterans rack up greater costs in the VCCP, largely from increased inpatient expenses and prescription drugs. Low-risk prostate cancer patients in the VCCP are twice as likely as those in the VHA to receive unneeded surgery or radiation, costly procedures that also carry significant risks. The private sector performs more "guideline discordant," "questionable" and "low-value" tests than the VHA, which then lead to more unnecessary services downstream, higher health-care costs and potential harm to the patient. Overuse of neuroimaging for headache and peripheral neuropathy is far more common in the private sector than the VHA. Veterans referred to the VCCP for other imaging are more apt to have pricey MRIs than less expensive CT scans and X-rays. Even for something as straightforward as sleep apnea testing, VCCP providers are nine times more likely than their VHA counterparts to use expensive lab-based tests instead of cost-effective home alternatives. The explanation is simple: With lax oversight, private-sector, fee-for-service incentives drive overtreatment and profit-seeking that isn't permitted in the VHA. Collins -- and Congress -- should pay attention not only to wasteful expenditures, but also health outcomes. A growing body of research shows that, on average, veterans die at higher rates within 30 days of hospital admission when treated in the private sector across numerous conditions, including angina, stroke and heart failure, emergency care and COVID-19. Two-year survival is better for VHA than VCCP veterans who initiate chronic dialysis. VHA patients fare as good or better for inpatient and outpatient care as well, including for stroke, COPD, headaches, diabetes, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, hypertension, urinary tract infections, knee arthroplasty and myocardial infarction medication. To be fair, there are a few studies where private hospital care was less expensive -- for six acute conditions in one study, knee arthroplasties and cataract surgeries in another, and coronary artery bypass graft procedures in a third. But these are more the exception than the rule. What makes VHA care generally more effective? The "VA Advantage," as researchers call it, stems from superior care coordination and information systems tailored specifically for veterans' complex needs. VHA providers are required to learn about the conditions -- military sexual trauma and toxic exposures, for example -- from which many veterans suffer. Research shows private providers frequently fail to deliver evidence-based treatments for common veteran conditions such as PTSD and depression. Because 100% of their patients are veterans, VHA providers have accumulated specialized expertise in veterans' problems, as well as in military culture. That simply doesn't exist in the private sector, where veterans make up less than 5% of the patient population. Private networks don't match the VHA's team-based approach, which gives vets easy access to doctors, psychologists, pharmacists, dieticians and social workers under one roof. The VHA's one-stop integrated care reduces logistical burdens that veterans bear when they seek care across a maze of multiple private-sector facilities. Secretary Collins' proposed workforce reduction threatens all of this. Community care has an important role to play, but, by design, as a supplement when VHA cannot furnish timely or conveniently located services. Before making drastic VHA cuts based on misguided assumptions, the secretary must confront the evidence: Slashing VHA staff and infrastructure will harm veterans while increasing costs to taxpayers. That's not fiscal "efficiency"; it's a betrayal of our sacred obligation to those who served. Russell B. Lemle and Suzanne Gordon are senior policy analysts at the Veterans Healthcare Policy Institute, a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank.
The Guardian
11-04-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Head of US military base in Greenland fired after JD Vance visit
The head of the US military base in Greenland, a Danish territory coveted by Donald Trump, has been fired for criticising Washington's agenda for the island. Col Susannah Meyers, who had served as commander of the Pituffik space base since July, was removed amid reports she had distanced herself and the base from JD Vance's criticism of Denmark and its oversight of the territory during the US vice-president's visit to the base two weeks ago. The US Space Force said in a statement on Thursday night: 'Commanders are expected to adhere to the highest standards of conduct, especially as it relates to remaining nonpartisan in the performance of their duties.' The statement did not expand further, but the US website said Meyers sent an email to all personnel at Pituffik on 31 March 'seemingly aimed at generating unity among the airmen and guardians, as well as the Canadians, Danes and Greenlanders who work there, following Vance's appearance'. During his 28 March visit to the base, Vance told a press conference: 'Our message to Denmark is very simple: you have not done a good job by the people of Greenland. You have under-invested in the people of Greenland and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this incredible, beautiful land mass.' Sign up to Headlines US Get the most important US headlines and highlights emailed direct to you every morning after newsletter promotion In her email, relayed to Meyers wrote: 'I do not presume to understand current politics, but what I do know is the concerns of the US administration discussed by Vice-president Vance on Friday are not reflective of Pituffik space base.' The Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said on X: 'Actions to undermine the chain of command or to subvert President Trump's agenda will not be tolerated at the Department of Defense.' Trump has insisted the US needs control of Greenland for national and international security and has refused to rule out the use of force to secure it. Meyers had been replaced by Col Shawn Lee, the US Space Force said.
