Opinion | ‘A Gross Dishonor’: Cuts to Veterans’ Mental Health Care

To the Editor:

Re “V.A. Workers See Chaos in Services for Mental Care” (front page, March 24):

I am a Vietnam veteran. I served with the First Cavalry Division as a sanitary inspector and shoe-leather epidemiologist. I spent more than 1,000 hours flying to bases between Saigon and the Cambodian border. We carried the wounded and dead on stretchers to aid stations or graves registration. After returning home in 1971, I went back to school and buried the war.

In 1990, Operation Desert Shield opened up a can of trauma for me and many vets. I could not accept that I, who had not carried a gun, was traumatized by my service. Over the next 30 years I went to family therapy, couples therapy and individual therapy. But it was only after Covid that I signed up for health care at Veterans Affairs. The trauma therapy there exceeded any I had done before. I believe all the V.A. health services today are nonpareil.

About 6 percent of the nation’s population are veterans, and surveys have found that more than half of Americans have a close relative who has served in the military. Yet I do not hear or see my senators nor, with some exceptions, my representatives, objecting publicly and loudly to what President Trump and his appointees are doing to our veterans’ services. If they want to be re-elected, they should get some backbone and speak out for the V.A. and all veterans.

This is not a political issue but one affecting the health of the nation. Their deafening silence is a gross dishonor. Let’s put some substance behind “thank you for your service.”

James C. Wright
Gladwyne, Pa.

To the Editor:

The suicide rate among veterans is staggering — more than double that of the civilian population. How, then, can a Republican administration that pins gun violence on the inaccessibility of mental health care justify what’s happening at Veterans Affairs facilities around the country?

With DOGE cutting jobs and driving clinical professionals to quit by fundamentally altering their positions, what’s happening is unconscionable. And more lives will be lost as a result.

President Trump should not get to express support for our military and then turn around and pull the rug out from under them. Our veterans — and the mental health work force that treats so many of them — deserve much better.

Thomas E. Templeton
Latham, N.Y.
The writer is a licensed mental health counselor.

To the Editor

The Trump administration’s order that Veterans Affairs mental health professionals conduct therapy calls in an open-floor office violates the privacy interests of their patients, and reflects a similar mistake of the Reagan administration’s opening policy, which it was forced to reverse.

President Ronald Reagan’s first official act after his inauguration in 1981 was to impose a hiring freeze. David Stockman, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, declared the freeze necessary to “control immediately the size and cost of government.” Appropriated funds for hiring mental health professionals for Vietnam veteran counseling centers established by Congress were not to be spent. The authority Mr. Stockman relied on to halt the expenditure was the Impoundment Control Act of 1974.

Representative David Bonior, chair of the Vietnam Veterans in Congress Caucus, who sued Mr. Stockman in federal court, was joined by other lawmakers in claiming such funds were not subject to impoundment.

Mr. Stockman, who avoided the draft during the Vietnam War because he was a divinity student, ultimately agreed to the release of funds, thereby securing dismissal of the lawsuit. President Trump, who avoided the draft during the Vietnam War because of alleged bone spurs, should likewise rescind his actions harming emotionally troubled veterans.

Joseph C. Zengerle
Bethesda, Md.
The writer, a disabled Vietnam veteran, was counsel to Mr. Bonior and other plaintiffs in the lawsuit against Mr. Stockman.

To the Editor

I was drafted into the Army in 1967, a 19-year-old boy from Brooklyn, as green as they come. I grew up really fast the next year when I was deployed to Vietnam, and in each and every letter I sent home to my family, I put this on the outside of the envelope in large capital letters: I.A.C.W.B. (“It’s a cruel world, baby.”)

Though I became cynical in how I viewed the war effort, I made it back in one piece, and I consider myself to this day to be a very lucky man.

What President Trump and Elon Musk are doing to the veterans is an abomination. Mr. Trump has made it clear that he views people risking their lives serving the nation in the military as losers. And now, in a miserable attempt to trim wasteful government fat, he is putting veterans at even greater risk.

I’m all for eliminating government waste, but why target Veterans Affairs? How about turning your trimming knife to the Pentagon and the bloated defense budget, which grows every year?

If I want to lose weight, I can do it one of two ways: I can limit eating fattening foods and cut calories so that the weight comes off without putting my health at risk.

Or I can cut off my legs.

Len DiSesa
Dresher, Pa.

Losses in Nature

To the Editor:

Re “What the Dodo Tells Us, 300 Years After Its Extinction,” by Renée Bergland (Opinion guest essay, nytimes.com, March 9):

Dr. Bergland rightly notes that extinction is nothing new. But as the chief scientist at the World Wildlife Fund, I am disturbed by the current rate of nature loss.

Monitored wildlife populations have declined on average by 73 percent in less than 50 years. Life on earth hasn’t seen losses this steep since the dinosaurs. Unlike the dinosaurs, however, we have the power to stop and even reverse much of the damage.

Our planet is barreling toward negative tipping points that, if crossed, will have dire consequences for not just nature, but for people as well. That may sound alarmist to some, but the health of even a single species population can have surprising ripple effects and could be the trigger for a more expansive tipping point.

Take the sea otter. As a predator, it keeps ecosystems in balance. When fur traders nearly wiped the species out in the 18th century, sea urchins overwhelmed the kelp forests it called home, hurting fish stocks and reducing coastal protection from storms.

But the sea otter’s saga didn’t end there. Conservation efforts sparked a remarkable recovery, boosting ecotourism and local economies. In this way, the sea otter is just one of many examples of how thriving communities and a healthy natural world go hand in hand. We flourish, or falter, together.

Rebecca Shaw
San Francisco

A.I. and Humans

To the Editor:

Re “A.I. Will Soon Be Smarter Than Humans. Let’s Discuss,” by Kevin Roose (The Shift column, Sunday Business, March 16):

I would like to point out that despite all the current fear-mongering, artificial intelligence is not a threat to human beings.

A.I. is an incredible tool when used properly. Its main value is in its predictive abilities. It can sift through huge amounts of data and discern patterns that the human brain, as predisposed to pattern-seeking as it is, cannot.

But A.I. cannot replace human thought. It can never write a work of literature. Yes, it can emulate past authors, but it can do so only in predictive ways. Or random ways.

What it cannot do is create the unexpected. That is something only a gifted author can do. And by “unexpected” I do not mean random. I mean the precise turn of events that creates the most surprise in the reader’s mind, and also the sense that what happened was, in fact, precisely what should have been expected.

Only a human mind can do that. So rest assured: A.I. will not replace us.

David Frank DeLuca
Palm Bay, Fla.