Letters: Unnecessary pain for area Vietnam veterans; blame for both parties in shutdown

Unnecessary pain for area Vietnam veterans

It is good that that there is a TV show that is pointing to the turmoils of PTSD and veterans. Many will never have to deal with this issue.

Many don’t know why it happens or what it does to a person. Most veterans that have seen combat or been in a war zone have it to some degree. Different things set it off.

I know that many Vietnam veterans from the Miles Township area get aroused and mad whenever the errors on the Miles Township Veterans Monument are brought up . The irony is that it never should have happened. There is no reason for Vietnam veterans to be forgotten and listed as Vietnam Era Veterans.

On the original monument they had a star beside their names to identify those that served in Vietnam. A new stone was made and the stars were never replaced. The township refuses to correct the problem? Why be so heartless? There is absolutely no reason that Vietnam veterans should not be honored for their service in Vietnam. They were the ones who saw the horrors of war and now someone that was not there decides they shouldn’t be honored for their service? This type of thing exasperates the PTSD in many Vietnam veterans, to not be honored and to be spit on again. This time by their own township? Why? They only want what they earned.

Blame for both parties in government shutdown

I’m very unhappy with how our government is handling immigration and the government shutdown. There has been so much misrepresentation in the media of the opposing side’s positions by both Republicans and Democrats that I can hardly believe that we elected these people to represent us.

Presently I find more fault on the Republican side. Trump’s negotiating strategy seems to be “let’s sit down and let me convince you (strong-arm you?) to see things my way,” coupled with ad hominem Twitter attacks on those who may disagree with him. I view Trump to be predominantly motivated by the desire to meet one of his core campaign promises: “Build the Wall.” “Mexico will pay for it” seems to have devolved into a series of complicated, implausible explanations about how Mexico will pay for the wall indirectly.

I support the Democrat proposal to restore funding to all government departments except Homeland Security, followed by re-examination of immigration policies. I also do not want the re-examination of immigration policies to be dominated by personal anecdotes, showy displays of seized weapons and drugs and bald-faced lies and deceptive use of statistics. Our elected representatives should stop relying on bluster, emotion and subterfuge and should instead retain an objective, qualified entity or panel a.) to identify immigration-related issues, b.) to identify a range of alternatives to deal with the issues, and c.) to develop a cost-benefit analysis of the alternatives.

Our “representative democracy” should not operate on a seat-of-the-pants basis.