Once again, something rotten in the District of Columbia

[unixronin]

Republicans in the House are pushing to permanently kill the estate tax.  How are they planning to make up the budget shortfall?  Apparently by refusing to fund veterans' care.  (blackthornglade reports that they're also helping trim the veterans' healthcare budgets by "reclassifying" thousands of veterans, including those disabled from injuries received fighting in America's wars, as "reservists" ineligible for VA benefits.)

Now it may be just me, but it shouldn't matter worth a damn if you're a reservist.  If you're called up by your country to go off to fight in a war that means little or nothing to you personally, and you come home from it wounded or disabled, your country had bloody well better be willing to cover your associated medical bills -- and if anyone in your government looks the other way and says "That's not our problem", they should rapidly cease to be members of the government.  In fact, I venture to suggest they should find themselves drafted as privates on the front line of that same war.

It's bad enough to vote to send people off to do a job that you're unwilling to do yourself because it's too dirty or too dangerous.  It's worse to do so when you basically have to lie to come up with a rationalization for that job that anyone will believe.  But to then cheat your troops out of medical care, when they come home wounded or maimed, is nothing short of reprehensible.

Tell me again why we allow these swine to remain in office....?

Comments

Much as I hate to admit it...

[bbwoof.livejournal.com]

...the reason why we allow these cockroaches (please don't insult pigs) to remain in power is that the alternative is Civil War. Things just haven't gotten bad enough yet to make that option palatable.

But they're going in that direction.

Timothy McVeigh was a superbly-trained soldier, fit to carry out warfare against what he considered a hateful government.* But he was not an officer, and didn't have any training in strategic planning. His great mistakes were 1) too little, 2) too early, and 3) aimed at the wrong target. But if the neocons don't remember that as long as they intend to milk the government, it behooves them to provide good government, then Timothy McVeigh may take a role in history as the first martyr of the Second American Revolution.



* Do not take this to mean that I admire the man, or condone his actions. I do not. I merely make this observation as a student of history.

Re: Much as I hate to admit it...

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

...the reason why we allow these cockroaches (please don't insult pigs) to remain in power is that the alternative is Civil War. Things just haven't gotten bad enough yet to make that option palatable.

"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but it's too soon to start shooting the bastards." -- Claire Wolfe

Personally, I'm not too sure about that second part. In fact, I find myself sometimes thinking things have been allowed to go rather too far already. On the other hand, I'll add to McVeigh's errors that he was also, IMHO and TTBOMK, motivated by the wrong reasons; and also I'll state that I'd have grave reservations about a post-second-revolution America that could find no-one better to raise as a martyr than Timothy McVeigh. That seems to me far too close to condoning the slaughter of innocents -- and the fact is, the people in that building were innocents.

The gripping hand is, all evidence seems to indicate that, through wilful inaction and alerts knowingly not passed on, Federal law enforcement was as responsible for the deaths at Oklahoma City as McVeigh and Nichols were. They had warnings from the Militia of Montana; they chose to disregard them because the source was politically incorrect. They had warnings from an informer; they chose to disregard them because she was technically under the authority of a different agency. And we'll probably never know why it was that ATF declined to pass on the warning it is reported they received, but chose instead to arrange for their people to be out of the building that day but not warn anyone else.

(I have nasty suspicions about the above. I have speculated more than once that events took place as they did because one can make more political capital out of a terrorist bombing on US soil than from the same bombing averted by a timely arrest.)

Re: Much as I hate to admit it...

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Lest I forget, your point about civil war is taken. I personally hope it won't come to that, but as John F. Kennedy observed, "Those who make peaceful change impossible will make violent change inevitable."

[ilcylic.livejournal.com]

Why do they always have to couple something I approve of with something that makes me want to start a revolution?
-Ogre

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

The law of averages has to catch up with them sooner or later -- eventually, they'll hit on a good idea by sheer random chance. But when they do, the odds are highly against it being paired with a second.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

*nods* I think it's high time for the NCO and officer cadre to tell the Vacationer-in-Chief and his minions, "AS YOU WERE SIR!" .... and back it up with the weapons he's placed at their disposal.

Lying to them about contract length and objective and all that is bad enough. And then you're just going to drop them back on their ass on a medical discharge and leave them to bleed???

You know, in the last war we got into and couldn't get out of, when the Ell-Tee did enough stuff that Just Ain't Right, he came home in a body bag... and neither president involved completed two terms.

[jilara.livejournal.com]

And of course it's a documentable fact that the highest casualty rate is for National Guard units, who aren't even reservists. And shouldn't have been sent over there in the first place, because the National Guard was intended by everyone from the Dawn of the Republic to present-day for securing the *home front.* And probably the reason the Guard has the high casualty rate is that they're doing a job they weren't trained for. More than a few political pundits have not-entirely-satirically theorized that they'll be calling up Civil War reenactors when they run out of anyone else.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

And of course it's a documentable fact that the highest casualty rate is for National Guard units, who aren't even reservists. [...] And probably the reason the Guard has the high casualty rate is that they're doing a job they weren't trained for.

Exactly. Our military is stretched too far and spread too thin on the ground relative to its current capabilities, and the wrong people are in-country in the wrong place doing the wrong jobs for the wrong reasons.