Bobby Muller, VFA: America’s Broken Social Contract – Our Betrayal

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America’s Broken Social Contract – Our Betrayal
March 21st, 2007 · 4 Comments

by Bobby Muller-Veterans for America

As we enter the fifth year of our war in Iraq, I am deeply distressed that our country is betraying our service members.

As a veteran, I can assure you that there is no greater pain than the sense of betrayal by a government and a country that send you to war.

Thirty-eight years ago, while serving in Vietnam, an enemy bullet ripped through my chest as I led an assault against a hill, just below the demilitarized zone, defended by North Vietnamese regular forces. It is a miracle that I survived, albeit as a paraplegic confined to a wheelchair. The military medical evacuation was the best in the world. I was flown out to the hospital ship the U.S.S. Repose and given immediate life-saving surgery. The care was spectacular. Then I entered long-term rehabilitation and things went downhill fast.

My first day in the New York City veterans’ hospital, where I was to stay as an inpatient for a year, was the first time I cried since being wounded. I was overwhelmed with despair at the circumstances I found myself in. LIFE magazine depicted my ward as a “medical slum.” It was awful.

When my government asked me to serve, I did. I paid an immense personal price, and my country subsequently turned its back on me. I had been betrayed.

As the war began to wind down and we became aware that our government lied about the necessity and purposefulness of the war, I became very angry and the betrayal that I felt was debilitating.

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