Can I blog during a moment of silence?
May. 26th, 2008 02:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mouse_rantsI'm not surprised that Bush should be the first president to call for a moment of silence on Memorial Day. Anything to keep us from talking about the ways he's screwed over the military, while proclaiming his great patriotism. Starting with his chicken-hawk stance in Vietnam, when he war-mongered around Yale, secure in the knowledge that he himself would never have to put his life on the line, through his war-by-choice in Iraq, where he sent the military off short of everything from armor to troops (not failing to mention the severe shortage of leadership) - and ending with the greeting they get on the home front, where vets unlucky enough to get PTSD risk being retroactively rejected from the service, those who do get to claim medical care from the VA have to pay higher rates, and the ones healthy and ambitious enough to hope to use their GI benefits to go to college have to manage on the pittance that is left in that program. Bush's own actions this Memorial Day include threatening a veto of a bill that would return those benefits to something resembling the ones originally promised to American veterans. But hey - he gave the Unknown Soldier a wreath, right? Of course, we paid for it.
It infuriates me that Bush and his supporters can trumpet themselves as the true patriots on the basis of their empty words and gestures, and the American people give them a pass on their actual actions - actions that belie those high-sounding words.
My father, a WWII vet, died in a VA hospital. His life rather fell apart in its last few years, and I was immensely grateful that the VA was there, to do what it could for him. At that time, it never occurred to me (or probably anyone) that someone could be suffering from PTSD so many years after the war, but now I have to wonder. He never spoke, to me at least, of his service...of course, in my youthful selfishness, I never thought to ask. I know he considered his time in the service important; I doubt he would have had the career he had if he didn't take pride in it. But he never had any war stories, so I don't even know how much war he saw, or what he thought about it. I know he wasn't wounded, and I know he finished college and went to graduate school on the GI Bill, and I know the VA was there for him when he needed it. I wonder how many veterans of Bush's war will be able to say that. I hope that's one of the many things we will be able to change, starting next year.
It infuriates me that Bush and his supporters can trumpet themselves as the true patriots on the basis of their empty words and gestures, and the American people give them a pass on their actual actions - actions that belie those high-sounding words.
My father, a WWII vet, died in a VA hospital. His life rather fell apart in its last few years, and I was immensely grateful that the VA was there, to do what it could for him. At that time, it never occurred to me (or probably anyone) that someone could be suffering from PTSD so many years after the war, but now I have to wonder. He never spoke, to me at least, of his service...of course, in my youthful selfishness, I never thought to ask. I know he considered his time in the service important; I doubt he would have had the career he had if he didn't take pride in it. But he never had any war stories, so I don't even know how much war he saw, or what he thought about it. I know he wasn't wounded, and I know he finished college and went to graduate school on the GI Bill, and I know the VA was there for him when he needed it. I wonder how many veterans of Bush's war will be able to say that. I hope that's one of the many things we will be able to change, starting next year.
