Spitting on Veterans
As someone who opposed the Vietnam
War and didn’t spit on a single soldier, I have never believed those
stories about servicemen in uniform encountering a tsunami of
expectoration upon returning from Southeast Asia.
In the ’60s, our contempt was primarily aimed at the
commanders-in-chief, Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, who
sent more than 58,000 young Americans to their deaths in that immoral
and unnecessary war. Also earning our contempt were a few specific
soldiers who intentionally committed atrocities, such as Lt. William
Calley, who ordered the murder of as many as 500 My Lai villagers,
mostly women, children, infants and the elderly.
But for
veterans who were lucky enough to make it home, we knew our country had
put them through horrors that would take them a long time to get over.
The last thing we wanted to do was to make their lives harder. They
were kids we’d grown up with who weren’t as fortunate as we were to be
protected by college or marriage deferments, which in those days were
the primary means through which we avoided their fate.
Disrespecting the Troops
Exaggerated
claims about the inhumanity of those who oppose wars toward those who
fight them are intentional distortions to try to discredit protesters
as unpatriotic. But, in fact, war boosters are often the ones who
disrespect our troops the most.
The most obvious examples are
the so-called “chicken hawks,” President George W. Bush and Vice
President Dick Cheney, who avoided military service during Vietnam but
now support open-ended war as long as someone else’s children or young
parents are being sacrificed.
Unbelievably, the Bush administration opposes—and has even threatened to veto—an updated GI Bill for Iraq
war veterans to give those who risk their lives in Bush’s war the same
full college benefits the original GI Bill provided for veterans of
World War II and Vietnam.
Even harder to believe, Sen. John
McCain, the presumed Republican presidential nominee, also opposes the
new GI Bill. McCain was a prisoner of war during Vietnam. Unlike Bush
and Cheney, McCain actually knows the overwhelming sacrifices made by
American soldiers sent into war by politicians.
We can’t
really explain McCain’s opposition. We can only report the way he tries
to explain it. McCain says he opposes full college benefits for soldiers who serve “only” one enlistment
because too many of them might leave the military to attend college. In
the course of that one enlistment, a soldier could be sent into active
combat in Iraq or Afghanistan as often as three times.
The
Bush administration has no qualms about sending the same soldiers back
into combat again and again. Psychiatrists from Veterans Affairs say
that many soldiers have not dealt with the effects of their last time
in combat before they are sent again.
That may be the reason
why new cases of post-traumatic stress disorder among soldiers jumped
50% in 2007, with nearly 14,000 newly diagnosed cases among the 40,000
troops that have been diagnosed since 2003. McCain wants to make
soldiers “earn” full college benefits by re-enlisting. Risking your
life with a piddling three combat tours isn’t enough for him. You
should be required to make it back alive at least six times before we
let you go to college.
This entire debate confuses me because
I live near a college campus. There is an Army recruiting station right
down the street. From all the signs and flashing neon lights in the
window, I thought the whole purpose of the Army was to provide
educational benefits.
Of course, the other reason Bush and
McCain say they oppose increasing educational benefits is because it
would simply cost too much. Why, over the next 10 years, the college
benefits to our soldiers could cost $2 billion annually, they say.
You
know what else costs $2 billion, that enormous amount of money it would
take to provide a college education for our military veterans?
According to the Congressional Budget Office, that is the cost of one
week of the Iraq
war. McCain built a political reputation over the years as a maverick
by occasionally breaking from his fellow Republicans. But in order to
win the Republican presidential nomination, he appears to have made a
conscious decision to run for what the Democrats now call “Bush’s third
term.”
In fact, by opposing the new GI Bill, McCain has broken
with some Republican supporters of military veterans, including Sen.
Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, another Vietnam veteran, and Sen. John Warner of Virginia, former secretary of the Navy.
Military
service today should be a bridge to a college education, just as it was
for veterans of World War II and Vietnam. Instead, Bush and McCain are
spitting on the service of our returning soldiers. It’s time they
stopped.
What’s your take? Write: editor@shepex.com or comment on this story online at www.expressmilwaukee.com.
Jim0
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