So I had this great idea for a parody column.
We're in this stupid, unnecessary war, right? A totally voluntary war, which had nothing to do with any threat to our country. The president wanted a war, so he painted a deceptive picture and got us into a war against the advice of, well, everyone.
Now, this isn't a new thing. Presidents have been shipping U.S. troops overseas for various reasons for quite a while now. But this is the stupidest one on the flimsiest pretexts since the Spanish-American war. And that got me thinking.
Who's been around since the Spanish-American war? Who has an interest in us getting into a fairly major armed conflict every decade or so? Who would, in fact, die out if we didn't?
That's right!
They've got millions of members. They have offices in Washington. And without foreign wars - legitimate or illegitimate - their membership would shrink would eventually die out. It's the VFW, behind the curtain, manipulating the government and fomenting foreign conflicts.
So, never one to shirk research that is as easy as accessing the Internet, I surfed on over to the VFW site. And that pretty much killed that idea.
I respect these people too much to parody them. Whenever they signed up and for whatever reason they signed up, they faced hardship and deprivation and death and they didn't run. And whether the war was as necessary and noble as the Big One or as stupid and counterproductive as Iraq, the soldiers who fought in it were brave and long-suffering and utterly necessary to the liberties that I enjoy, and I respect them too much to denigrate them even in jest.
Sure, they're human. There are good ones and bad ones - if you have seen the fine production Band of Brothers, recall the drunken G.I. who killed his fellow for a tank of gas in Austria. There are evil men in uniform, just as there are in the rest of life. But just as you must not judge a town by its criminals, we must never let the bad cloud our eyes to the overwhelming good. The average, actually. Because these men are people just like you and I.
Except.
Veterans are not inherently more moral or braver than any given person you meet on the street. But when the time came, they bore the burden that the country asked of them, and that's what counts. That's what distinguishes a veteran. They weren't just willing to serve - with all it entailed - they did so.
So I'm not going to write a parody column.
I am, however, going to castigate again the Republicans currently running this country. Yet again they prove that, to them, the pen is more worthy than the sword.
Just last week - the week of Veteran's Day - the Republicans decided to do away with the traditional hearings at which veterans get to address the Congress. Because, you know, who cares what they think anyway. Both the VFW and the Disabled American Veterans protested, but of course the very point is that Republicans don't really care what they have to say.
And all year long, the Democrats, led by their war veteran members, have been trying to better fund Veteran's Affairs. And all year long the Republicans have voted to stop them*. When they finally caved (because of Republican defections, which just goes to show that as I have long maintained that not all Republicans are evil) they took the despicable tack of voting en masse for legislation they fought tooth and nail to oppose. Which is the very core of the Republican truth; they don't give a God-damn about veterans, but they care very much about appearing like they do.
And after the much-publicized capitulation-as-heroic-endorsement, they went right back to cutting veteran funding. This despite the largest growth of pork spending in American history.
But then, the Republican party today has become the party of looters, not fighters. Men who, unlike their fathers, didn't serve. Gore was in Vietnam. So was Kerry. But this administration, these men who have sent their betters to die in Iraq, they weren't willing to fight. They had, as Cheney said, better things to do.
Our veterans deserve so much better.
- Sun Ra