Cassi Creek:
That’s the price American super-patriots are willing to pay, the last drop of everyone else’s blood. Brave, heroic, patriotic men such as Dick Cheney, Dan Quayle, and a host of neo-cons, teavangelist, and others will willingly “support our troops” by sending them to foreign wars to defend the rights of American corporations so patriotic that they hide all their resources and profits off shore. War, after all, is not for the wealthy, the politically connected, or those who can buy their way out of it.
Representative Skelton fears a chasm. That chasm is already there. It is not going to close. It is going to widen while Congress does nothing to change things, while our society does nothing t change things.
The military, the active duty forces that are always training and maintaining operational readiness to respond instantly to the nation’s need to effect diplomacy via force, has always been reduced to a bare minimum during post-war periods. When we entered WWI, our standing army was the 19th in size among industrialized nations. Argentina had a bigger army than did the United States. In the post-war drawdown, the Army and Navy turned away men who were willing to soldier for food and lodging during the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. The isolationism of a nation that believed it was protected by two oceans caused many Americans to view the armed forces as a refuge for the lazy, the unwilling to work, and the socially outcast. As a result, we entered WWII woefully undermanned for the task of fighting and winning two separate wars. Our manufacturing capacity, our access to raw materials, and our President's foresight in pushing a peacetime draft through an unwilling Congress saved us and much of Europe from losing a war to the most evil regime to ever exist.
These same leaders saw the need to protect the job market from an influx of millions of returning GIs and established the GI Bill that provided many discharged soldiers with a college education and an affordable home loan to begin their post-war lives. We wound up with an educated, housed, and ready for employment group of veterans who became the great middle class of this nation.
Korea and Vietnam were much more limited in scope and demand. The decision to avoid national mobilization such as took place in WWI and WWII opened Skelton’s rift. The Korean War demanded so little of most citizens that the war is almost forgotten in today’s history classes.
The decision to not mobilize the reserves for Vietnam, combined with the number of deferred men greatly widened the rift. Conscientious objector deferments could be obtained for the asking in some “locals.” Other “locals” were known for never granting CO status to anyone. Students who carried 15 semester hours in accredited universities were classified 2-S for that semester. Students who enrolled for fewer hours were classified as 1-A ( cannon fodder awaiting their induction notices. Seminary students were deferred, as were mail-in ordinations in some locals. Some college athletes were deferred despite poor academic performance. Felons were unwanted by the Armed Forces but many civilian courts used the military as an alternative prison. “Jail or the Army” was a common sentence. Some CO’s served out alternative service while others did prison time. The permutations were endless, and not given to solidifying the populace.
There were two reasons to make the Vietnam trip. One could voluntarily, or involuntarily, enlist, or one could screw up in some fashion that resulted in receiving an induction notice that began with the word, “Greeting!”
Vietnam left us with a badly fragmented army to match a badly fragmented society. The Army, mostly lower class whites and blacks too poor to afford college or too poorly prepared to enter college were being led by mostly white college boy officers and some holdovers from the WWII days in the upper officer and NCO echelons. The social elite, the wealthy, and those who could afford college opted out of any form of service except, perhaps, national guard slots obtained by family money and prestige at at time when no one else could find those slots.
We left Vietnam with a blue collar armed forces and a white collar culture that felt all the armed forces were evil. That gap is what Skelton largely sees. We’ve come to believe that only the mentally lame and the lazy enter our armed forces. Not only is this untrue, the gap has convinced the armed forces that the public continues to see it in that manner.
We need to make military service obligatory again, as it was prior to Vietnam. Skelton’s rift, our rift needs to be closed. We’ve got a lot of troops who are trying to find their way home from current wars. They need our help badly. But until we recognize them as us, they won’t receive our help.
Skelton fears 'chasm' between military, citizens
By DAVID A. LIEB
The Associated Press
Thursday, November 11, 2010; 11:53 AM
“JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- Departing House Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton said Thursday that he fears a chasm will develop between U.S. military troops and the rest of the citizenry.”
…“"I am fearful that a chasm will develop between those who protect our freedoms and those who are being protected," Skelton said.
Although Skelton based his unsuccessful re-election campaign on military issues, he bemoaned that there was little national discussion during this year's election about the ongoing fight against terrorism and the conflicts in the Middle East.
"I am concerned that the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, will fade in the American consciousness, and that the purpose of our efforts against extremist terrorists will fade," Skelton said. "It could come to pass that the American military could become isolated from American society and that Americans in their thoughts may fail to consider our men and women in uniform." …
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/11/AR2010111102655.html?hpid=moreheadlines
America's veterans: Lost at home
Net
By Montgomery C. Meigs
Saturday, November 13, 2010
At a recent dinner in New York's Gotham Hall, Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, poignantly described the lot of veterans of our campaigns in Southwest Asia. Returning home, Mullen said, they encounter a society from which their service has in a way estranged them. Can we help them if we do not understand what they and their families need as they make their transition back to civilian life?...
…Why is it that, in a rich and caring society like ours, during an age when the most casual information from a continent away is available in real time, we cannot provide a virtual bridge to shorten the long way home for those who have sacrificed in our defense?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/12/AR2010111205031.html?hpid=opinionsbox1
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment