Ohio veteran petitions to change U.S. law restricting benefits for peacetime veterans
- mdaviscvono
- Mar 27
- 2 min read
BY Siobhan Harms Cleveland
PUBLISHED 5:22 PM ET Mar. 25, 2026
CLEVELAND — Despite many short-and long-term conflicts in the interim, the last time the U.S. officially declared war was during WWII in 1942.
What You Need To Know
Despite not officially declaring war since WWII, the U.S. has engaged in several conflicts
Veterans are classified as peacetime and wartime veterans under U.S. law, and their benefit eligibility hinges on this classification
U.S. veteran Tim Cookson is advocating for a change that would give U.S. service members who have earned Expeditionary and Campaign Medals as wartime veterans, even if they served during “peacetime” conflicts
Under U.S. law, veterans are classified as ‘wartime veterans’ and ‘peacetime veterans.’ Despite not officially being at war, much of the time since 1942 to the present has been classified as wartime, with peacetime only occurring between 1975 and 1990.
However, this period of peacetime was marred by significant conflict.
During the 1980s, the U.S. intervened in the Lebanese Civil War. In Oct. 1983, a massive suicide truck bomb destroyed the U.S. Marine Corps barracks at Beirut Airport, killing 241 U.S. service members.
“That was the single-day biggest loss of life in Marine Corps history since Iwo Jima,” Tim Cookson, a U.S. veteran said. “And yet, they’re peace-time.”
Peacetime veterans aren’t eligible for certain benefits like VA pensions for veterans in financial need, survivors pensions for widows and state-level benefits reserved for wartime veterans.
Cookson, who served in the Navy from 1981 to 1987, has set out to change this.
“Even the technicians that maintain the B-2 bombers sitting here stateside that will never see combat are wartime veterans,” Cookson said. “There are Marines who were taking sniper fire, artillery fire, RPG fire in Beirut that are peacetime.”
Cookson has written to Congress, the White House and to VFW leadership to amend the law to recognize Expeditionary and Campaign Medal recipients as wartime veterans.
“If it’s wartime enough to earn these medals, then it should be wartime enough for the benefit of the VA,” Cookson said.
Cookson said he’s in a position where he doesn’t need those additional benefits available to wartime veterans. However, he said he’s still fighting for the change on behalf of the other veterans he served with during that time period.
“There are veterans that are denied those benefits that need those benefits, and that’s really what the focus should remain on, those other veterans,” Cookson said. “They deserve it.”
Comments