If there’s one thing the entire country, Left, Right, Center, Democrat, Republican, Conservative, Liberal, Libertarian, whomever, can agree on, it’s that if you’re going to send young men and women into hostile environments where they could easily wind-up dead or permanently disabled, you owe those young men and women a debt of gratitude, and they should not be treated like political footballs. But apparently, that universal truth is not known to every one in the Republican party. Hot on the heels of killing a Veterans Jobs Act that would have helped train and find jobs for our returning Afghanistan and Iraq war veterans, word broke yesterday that an anonymous Republican Senator has chosen to use the annual, bi-partisan bill to give disabled veterans a cost of living benefit increase to do just that; politicize something that should just be accepted practice.
The depths to which the government-hating Republican party have sunk to are despicable, to put it mildly.
As I wrote in a previous piece, the act of a Republican lawmaker standing in the way of assistance to veterans is particularly galling. When George W. Bush, a Republican, asked Congress twice to go to war during his Presidency, Republicans in Congress couldn’t wait to approve the resolutions to start pounding the drums of war. After all, Defense is their pet industry, and anything they can do to prop it up is fine by them. Or rather, anything they can do to line the pockets of Defense contractors, they’re all for. Because clearly, they’ve turned the corner on combat, and soldiers, young men and women who in many cases are fresh out of High School with very few options in front of them for advanced education without military service, are now simply tools of the trade. Once they’re use as physical assets on the ground is up, Republicans appear ready to put them out to pasture and let them fend for themselves.
The entire country needs to be outraged over the blocking of this bill. The people benefiting from this small, cost of living increase are those who were maimed and disabled, or in truly tragic cases, the surviving family members of a soldier killed in combat. What kind of society are we allowing the GOP to foster? We have to look ourselves in the mirror and ask some very serious questions. Are we really okay with Republicans voting for war, putting those very expensive wars on our country’s credit card, and then adding literally adding insult to injury by not giving them a modest raise to account for inflation?
And before we give the party a pass since it’s just one Senator who’s blocking the bill, keep one thing in mind. In order for a Senator to put a hold on a bill, they have to do so with the express permission of their party leadership. That’s right, Senator Mitch McConnell had to sign off on this. Americans need to start keeping a scorecard handy of all the low-down, dirty-pool, political theater bullshit that the GOP has pulled in the last two years. The latest two bills they’ve blocked have both been the worst. I frankly am shocked, as a citizen, that they’d be willing to send people to die or come back forever broken, and that they don’t find taking care of those people as being a worthy expenditure.
They have to rail against Welfare, Medicare and Social Security; I get that. They’re ideologues who believe government expenditures are wrong just on general principle. I of course disagree vociferously, but ever since the first Colonial men stockpiled muskets and other armaments and created militias to assert our independence, we’ve seen soldiers as a shared and mutual responsibility. We may disagree with the idea of war, and we certainly can voice disagreement with a particular war effort, but supporting the troops doesn’t just mean giving them a fucking gun and a helmet; it means taking care of them when they return home. I’m not saying every soldier is a hero; but every soldier took their personal devotion to our country to a level that many, many of us are not comfortable doing, and for that we owe them an eternal debt of gratitude.
We don’t ship them off to exotic locations to drink Mai-Tais and get laid by beautiful people. We send them into hostile environments where sometimes they can’t discern friend from foe, and where they’re under constant threat of attack. The reality is that while we’re at war, we send these young Americans into situations that they’ll never forget, and that will forever change who they are. It’s not a vacation to go to war; but the Republican party is doing everything they can to treat them as such.
This is just the latest example of how much the party has changed. There is no chance that forty years ago Republican voters, let alone legislators would block any effort to get veterans, especially disabled ones, more money. It should be reason enough to send a message to the Republicans that they cannot continue to behave so callously towards the lives of the very men and women they decided to put in harm’s way. The soldiers and family members impacted by this particular decision make this story perhaps even more upsetting than the blocking of the jobs bill. Frankly, these soldiers, the ones who had limbs blown off, the ones who suffer from debilitating PTSD, are the soldiers we should be most willing to help out in any way we can. And how can we tell a spouse of a lost combat solider that they and their kids are not worthy of the same kind of raises that are standard in most businesses? It’s shocking to even think about, isn’t it?
This bill has been a bi-partisan tradition in Washington for years and years. It’s the right thing to do morally and ethically. Otherwise, the message the GOP seems to be sending is “Sign up, serve, and see ya!” Keep in mind, that Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan are already setting the groundwork for more war, possibly in Iran, if they are to be elected. Can we trust that if they win, and they do send our sons and daughters off to the desert to fight again, that they’ll treat those men and women properly on their return? War is not a video game. Service members don’t just re-spawn if they’re killed or injured. There are real life consequences to making the decision to go and blow up little brown people. The Washington Post is reporting that the hold has been lifted, but there is precious little time for the bill to be passed signed. Does it seem like a colossal waste of time to anyone else?
And if one of those consequences is that it’s too expensive for us to do the right thing once they come home, maybe it’s time to stop sending them off to war in the first place.
Literally Adding Insult To Injury
If there’s one thing the entire country, Left, Right, Center, Democrat, Republican, Conservative, Liberal, Libertarian, whomever, can agree on, it’s that if you’re going to send young men and women into hostile environments where they could easily wind-up dead or permanently disabled, you owe those young men and women a debt of gratitude, and they should not be treated like political footballs. But apparently, that universal truth is not known to every one in the Republican party. Hot on the heels of killing a Veterans Jobs Act that would have helped train and find jobs for our returning Afghanistan and Iraq war veterans, word broke yesterday that an anonymous Republican Senator has chosen to use the annual, bi-partisan bill to give disabled veterans a cost of living benefit increase to do just that; politicize something that should just be accepted practice.
As I wrote in a previous piece, the act of a Republican lawmaker standing in the way of assistance to veterans is particularly galling. When George W. Bush, a Republican, asked Congress twice to go to war during his Presidency, Republicans in Congress couldn’t wait to approve the resolutions to start pounding the drums of war. After all, Defense is their pet industry, and anything they can do to prop it up is fine by them. Or rather, anything they can do to line the pockets of Defense contractors, they’re all for. Because clearly, they’ve turned the corner on combat, and soldiers, young men and women who in many cases are fresh out of High School with very few options in front of them for advanced education without military service, are now simply tools of the trade. Once they’re use as physical assets on the ground is up, Republicans appear ready to put them out to pasture and let them fend for themselves.
The entire country needs to be outraged over the blocking of this bill. The people benefiting from this small, cost of living increase are those who were maimed and disabled, or in truly tragic cases, the surviving family members of a soldier killed in combat. What kind of society are we allowing the GOP to foster? We have to look ourselves in the mirror and ask some very serious questions. Are we really okay with Republicans voting for war, putting those very expensive wars on our country’s credit card, and then adding literally adding insult to injury by not giving them a modest raise to account for inflation?
They have to rail against Welfare, Medicare and Social Security; I get that. They’re ideologues who believe government expenditures are wrong just on general principle. I of course disagree vociferously, but ever since the first Colonial men stockpiled muskets and other armaments and created militias to assert our independence, we’ve seen soldiers as a shared and mutual responsibility. We may disagree with the idea of war, and we certainly can voice disagreement with a particular war effort, but supporting the troops doesn’t just mean giving them a fucking gun and a helmet; it means taking care of them when they return home. I’m not saying every soldier is a hero; but every soldier took their personal devotion to our country to a level that many, many of us are not comfortable doing, and for that we owe them an eternal debt of gratitude.
We don’t ship them off to exotic locations to drink Mai-Tais and get laid by beautiful people. We send them into hostile environments where sometimes they can’t discern friend from foe, and where they’re under constant threat of attack. The reality is that while we’re at war, we send these young Americans into situations that they’ll never forget, and that will forever change who they are. It’s not a vacation to go to war; but the Republican party is doing everything they can to treat them as such.
This bill has been a bi-partisan tradition in Washington for years and years. It’s the right thing to do morally and ethically. Otherwise, the message the GOP seems to be sending is “Sign up, serve, and see ya!” Keep in mind, that Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan are already setting the groundwork for more war, possibly in Iran, if they are to be elected. Can we trust that if they win, and they do send our sons and daughters off to the desert to fight again, that they’ll treat those men and women properly on their return? War is not a video game. Service members don’t just re-spawn if they’re killed or injured. There are real life consequences to making the decision to go and blow up little brown people. The Washington Post is reporting that the hold has been lifted, but there is precious little time for the bill to be passed signed. Does it seem like a colossal waste of time to anyone else?
And if one of those consequences is that it’s too expensive for us to do the right thing once they come home, maybe it’s time to stop sending them off to war in the first place.
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