In the Year 2525

What, then, I wonder, do they
To chase all the goblins away?
They have some tribal sorcery you haven't mentioned yet
Oh, what do simple folk do to forget?
--What Do Simple Folk Do?, Lerner and Loewe

Assure a man that he has a soul
and then frighten him with old wives' tales
as to what is to become of him afterward,
and you have hooked a fish, a mental slave
--Theodore Dreiser

Old man trouble I don't mind him
You won't find him 'round my door
I've got starlight
I've got sweet dreams
I've got my man
Who could ask for anything more?
--I Got Rhythm, George Gershwin
__________

We included Dreiser only because he authored the first American Tragedy.

In his folksy, aw-shucks way, GWB is fond of saying that his legacy will remain unknown, as he will be dead when historians weigh in on the question.

This veteran will venture a reading now, and he doesn't even need recourse to Madame Fay's crystal ball. In a word, if Mr. Bush fils is waiting for laudatory strokes, he needn't stick around.

Forget the amateur hour that is the Phony War on Terror. Today, one-quarter of America's homeless are veterans. The National Alliance to End Homelessness recently released a comprehensive report on the situation, Vital Mission: Ending Homelessness Among Veterans. Among its findings:

• 336,627 [veterans]were homeless in 2006.
• Veterans make up a disproportionate share of homeless people. They represent roughly 26 percent of homeless people, but only 11 percent of the civilian population 18 years and older. This is true despite the fact that veterans are better educated, more likely to be employed, and have a lower poverty rate than the general population.

But forget this moment, if you can, and extrapolate to the near future.The vets are aging and need increased care and increased disability compensation due to increased severity of service-connected conditions, which naturally deteriorate with age. Consider that new Disabled Vets and Service-Connected vets are being created on a daily basis through combat actions that have no relevance to the safety of America.

The Department of Veterans Affairs is currently dealing with a huge backlog of cases, to the tune of 600,000 and counting. DVA hospitals are overcrowded and often substandard, and large numbers of honorably discharged vets are excluded from receiving their services. But that is now.

When Iraq and Afghanistan become a distant memory, the disabled soldiers will still be here and will pose a real social and economic problem, to be addressed by politicians who probably never served in the armed forces.

Where will the assets come from to maintain this population? We read about Social Security's future being in danger, but what of the veterans system? The latter is based upon yearly appropriations pulled from the national treasury. What will be available in the national coffers in 2010? 2020?

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan do not end when U.S. forces withdraw. For us, they end the day the last veteran of the wars dies. U.S. taxpayers will be paying veterans benefits for this war well into the 2060-70 time frame.

This is one of the elephants in the room, and none of the 2008 presidential candidates has yet shown the courage or will to address the enormousness/enormity of the situation. They are in good company, for none of the fraternal organizations have addressed the issue, either. Perhaps this is the fallout of the haute day of the faith-based agenda. They do not discuss it as they fear putting the mojo on the presumed magical appearance of the funds to pay this butcher's bill.

U.S. policy addresses the liberties and freedoms being forcibly imposed upon Afghanistan and Iraq, but few seem concerned about the quality of life of our veterans in the here and now.

And just in case all of the folks who tote the yellow ribbon magnets on their car didn't really mean it, there are other contraindicators to a positive legacy for GWB, outside of the plight of the veterans who humped this war.

This isn't news -- the imploding dollar, the untenable national debt, America's loss of legitimacy following the Phony War on Terror, diminished civil rights at home, the 20% of Americans without health coverage. . . A veritable cornucopia of self-imposed homeland terror for this holiday season. Take your pick.

A less free, less safe, more economically-burdened society -- all the price for one man's ego war. To the good General's question, "How will this story end?" Not well. A dismal prediction, but one based in reality versus wishful thinking. This societal hit is a greater threat to the welfare of America than anything ever posed by an al Qaeda mastermind.

This great American tragedy was wrought courtesy a mind not often linked with the superlative "master", but which has brought a result surpassing that which the best and brightest of that terror organization could have ever hoped for.