It is well known that we live in the midst of a Military Industrial Complex that has seen swelling budgets in the past decade, supposedly due to the September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
However, even Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has admitted that there is waste in defense, and that any further introduction of ground troops in other nations would be crazy in the future, both strategically and budget wise!
But while there is always a major push for MORE defense spending while cutting education and health care and other human needs, we fail to see equivalent concern for America’s veterans who have fought courageously in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The reality is that large percentages of veterans of those two wars have suffered PTSD, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and that suicides have occurred on military bases and in private life in alarming rates, plus murders of wives and children by veterans.
This is in addition to the horrific physical injuries visited upon our courageous troops by improvised explosive devices, and yet little attention is paid to this in the news media. Since Americans are not paying taxes for the wars, most are unaffected, since there is no draft, so it is easy for the average American to wave the flag, claim they are patriotic, and yet go about their business undisturbed!
We do not see a ground swell of support for INCREASED funding for veterans programs, and many Republicans, who love to claim they are patriots, have never served in the military, and have no interest in dealing with the reality of the lives of veterans after they return from war!
Better treatment of veterans, and efforts to cut the murder and suicide rate, MUST become a priority of our government, at the same time that major cuts in defense projects that enrich corporations must be implemented!
this is amazing ; so true its frightening.