It’s 99 years since the war to end all wars ended on November 11, 1917 on a rail car in in the forest of Compiègne, France. Veterans Day, known originally Armistice Day, which began in 1919 and became a legal holiday in 1938. It was after WW2 when a campaign was started to change the …
Tag: veterans
Nov 15 2013
The Cost of War for Soldiers
Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette
In a three part interview that appropriately began on Veterans’ Day, journalist, author and photographer discussed her latest book They Were Soldiers: How the Wounded Return From America’s Wars-The Untold Story with Jaisal Noor, the Real News Network producer.
Transcript can be read here
Transcript can be read here
Transcript can be read here
They Didn’t Know What They Were Getting Into: The Cost of War American-Style
by Ann Jones, TomDispatch
The last time I saw American soldiers in Afghanistan, they were silent. Knocked out by gunfire and explosions that left them grievously injured, as well as drugs administered by medics in the field, they were carried from medevac helicopters into a base hospital to be plugged into machines that would measure how much life they had left to save. They were bloody. They were missing pieces of themselves. They were quiet.
It’s that silence I remember from the time I spent in trauma hospitals among the wounded and the dying and the dead. It was almost as if they had fled their own bodies, abandoning that bloodied flesh upon the gurneys to surgeons ready to have a go at salvation. Later, sometimes much later, they might return to inhabit whatever the doctors had managed to salvage. They might take up those bodies or what was left of them and make them walk again, or run, or even ski. They might dress themselves, get a job, or conceive a child. But what I remember is the first days when they were swept up and dropped into the hospital so deathly still.
They were so unlike themselves. Or rather, unlike the American soldiers I had first seen in that country. Then, fired up by 9/11, they moved with the aggressive confidence of men high on their macho training and their own advance publicity.
Aug 17 2013
Mother Jones takes up the call for transgender equality
In an essay entitled The Pentagon’s Transgender Problem Mother Jones writers Adam Klasfeld and Brett Brownell consider the situation of military service by transgender people and the treatment of transgender veterans. They have subtitled the piece, in very small type:
New studies suggest that transgender civilians are twice as likely to enlist, and transgender veterans are 20 times as likely to commit suicide.
Nov 12 2012
Whining Veterans Don’t Know This Is General’s, Admiral’s and Chickenhawk’s Day
Steve used to spend many hours at our home with my son practicing tae kwon do, walking a tight rope and doing various other annoying things.
Actually none of the martial arts and athletic stunts were annoying but Steve could be. If I had only known more about his family… Well let’s not go there.
Steve went into Special Forces. My son chose to become a sissy Navy nuke. Hard to say who was most foolish but Steve had the most adventures.
Steve was in a wheelchair for months and told he would never walk again. Steve was eagerly pursuing his lifelong ambition to be an artist now that he could when he somehow managed to walk again. Intractable pain in his back will probably last for a lifetime but, hey, what do you expect when you enlist?
Steve was once court-martialed and imprisoned for years for breaking most everything to break in a Korean officer’s body when the Korean sought to enforce an illegal command with a pistol to Steve’s ear. His family always knew Steve was no good but the Army didn’t. Months after the affair had blown over, Steve had his rank, pay and status quietly restored.
After leaving the Army, Steve became a professional sky diver. I didn’t know there was such a thing as a professional sky diver but Steve is or was one.
At least one time, an adventure as a skydiver matched any combat in wars we never fought. Steve landed in a lake after tangling with a tree and was unable to free himself from the parachute and back pack. As recounted by my son, Steve strained to get an occasional breath of air. A five-year-old on the way from the drop talked about one man in a lake to his father as they were on their way home. Steve was rescued after an hour or two. He thought he was a goner, Steve told my son.
Steve whines some on occasion about lost records of wars never fought, like other Special Forces recruits and even this “peacetime” Vietnam veteran, but this is a day for generals and admirals and chickenhawks who held our coats and sent us off to war. Some of us are just too dumb to learn. I will thank you for not mentioning it.
Best, Terry
Aug 05 2011
What’s Hampering Jobless Veterans
With veterans’ unemployment rising, President Barack Obama is scheduled on Friday in a visit Washington’s Navy Yard to announce initiatives to prepare vets for civilian jobs.
Those boomers born during WWII and in the few years directly after may or may not remember their childhood years, I do. What your parents, coming out of the military, no higher education needed to fight our wars, or moms coming out of the factories, quickly taught the jobs needed to work in by those who for many reasons couldn’t serve in the military. You grew up into that working world that had quickly grown a prosperous middle class, and with usually small but regular raises and improved benefits and safety you were prospering better then your parents. That all started changing some thirty to forty years ago to growth at the top and wall street investing while the worker stopped sharing in the labors instead given easy, but costly, credit to make them think they were doing better then the generations previous.
Aug 01 2011
The Military Veteran: No Revenue = No Sacrifice
Now a decade plus added to the decades previous since Korea and especially us Vietnam Veterans, by ignoring what we were saying, PTS, TBI’s, Agent Orange, Suicides, more, to the first Gulf War Veterans, Gulf War Syndrome, more, and now into these two theater Veterans already, many issues from suicides to burn pits to once again homelessness and unemployment, more!
The 112th House has already tried cutting the VA budget and will continue same, DeJa-Vu all over again!
The Country is the Government, easier to lay blame at the agencies then to look in the mirror, from congress through the population, especially the false flag waving corporate financed self described only patriots!
Jul 29 2011
Infrastructure and Alternative Energy = Good Strong Growth
No money for infrastructure? Get ready to crumble!
July 28: Ed Rendell, former governor of Pennsylvania, talks with TRMS guest host Melissa Harris-Perry about the litany of benefits that would come with more investment in US infrastructure and the certain disaster if Republicans succeed in slashing government spending.
Not only infrastructure but add in alternative energy and new needed grid needs for.
Jul 25 2011
“Shared Sacrifice”??
Veterans and the Veterans Administration have been short changed for decades now, costing much more in fighting to catch up then if funded properly at the beginning and into, and throughout, our wars of choice, instead it’s easier for the people, their reps and some veterans to lay blame on the agency. Magnetic ribbons, wordy patriotic meme’s, flag waving and historic costumes, lapel flag pins and purple heart bandages is Not Sacrificing after Demanding the Soldiers and their Families do!!
Jul 21 2011
Tepublicans to Military Veterans: Shove It!!
Add in vitter trying to block the VA budget in the Senate {below} and the tepubs are continuing their decades long obstruction of Veterans Issues while laying blame constantly on the VA and their supporters love that, including veterans among them!!
Since the 110th congress and with Gen. Shinseki in they’ve been trying to play catchup with What Wasn’t Done Nor Mentioned in the 108th and 9th while they rubber stamped two more wars of choice and with Still No Demand from the Country as to their own Sacrifice now over a decade, added to the previous decades!!
I’m sure though they still have a supply of those ‘purple heart bandages’ they so enjoyed, pointed directly at us in-country Navy personal, while sending those troops into these two conflicts!!
Jul 21 2011
Senator Coburn to Vietnam Veterans: Shove It!!
Add in vitter trying to block the VA budget in the Senate {below} and the tepubs are continuing their decades long obstruction of Veterans Issues while laying blame constantly on the VA and their supporters love that, including veterans among them!!
Since the 110th congress and with Gen. Shinseki in they’ve been trying to play catchup with What Wasn’t Done Nor Mentioned in the 108th and 9th while they rubber stamped two more wars of choice and with Still No Demand from the Country as to their own Sacrifice now over a decade, added to the previous decades!!
I’m sure though they still have a supply of those ‘purple heart bandages’ they so enjoyed, pointed directly at us in-country Navy personal, while sending those troops into these two conflicts!!
Jul 17 2011
‘Jobless veterans, US national disgrace’
I Demand a War Tax and call it that, it’s been over a decade and counting of No Sacrifice by the Country as we demanded Sacrifice of our Soldiers and their Families, with multiple tours in two occupation theaters!
Those of us who were born during or in the years shortly after World War II grew into what our grand parents and parents with the help of our Government investments were building, joining in as we joined the workforce professions to build for our children, from the needed education professions to the skilled trades once professions.
Jul 16 2011