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name: will baker blogrollin' other sites: |
US Army Issued Pink Panties
From the �Perhaps You�d Like It Better In The Civilian Job Market� Desk, what the HELL gives with all these soldiers bitching and moaning to reporters about how they�re so demoralized and they want to go home to their little wives, etc., etc.? Since when did the United States Army turn into such a bunch of panty-waists? The last time I checked, when people join the armed forces, they are signing up to be soldiers. Yes, that may entail long, unpleasant deployments. It may entail going places where one is not liked. It may entail fighting, maybe even dying. Or maybe just living in a dusty tent and having sand in your crack for weeks on end. That is the job, as anyone who has, oh, seen a war movie knows full well. In return for the enormity of risk and personal sacrifice these men and women assume in the course of this job, the people of the United States pay billions of dollars to provide our military (yes, soldiers, the military belongs to the people) with what is probably the last surviving socialist economy on earth. They receive free health-care, subsidized housing, and many other benefits of the sort that have become almost unheard of in the civilian world of work. If they stick with their service and make a career of it, they and their families will be taken care of for life. The soldiers of previous generations understood that the military�s total compensation package can come at a terrible price. My grandfather enjoyed free health care for almost his entire adult life�and he needed it, because the pneumonia he contracted in a Nazi POW camp left him with damaged and infection-prone lungs until the day he died. But listening to reporters interviewing these 18 and 19 year old soldiers today, I�m amazed to hear them whinge. Surely somewhere in those slick �Army of One� recruitment videos, amidst the messages about how being a soldier will make you a total fucking badass and chick-magnet, etc., etc., they must have mentioned that being in the Army means doing what you�re told. They seem not to know that being a soldier means you might have to fight. Apparently, their recruiters gave them the impression that being a soldier means free college, free housing, free healthcare, subsidized grocery stores�.all for nothing. Someone should have mentioned to them that the American people subsidize their lives for a reason, and that reason is not because they�re such swell guys and gals. And let me be quite clear: I am absolutely opposed to this occupation of Iraq. It is a colossal edifice of mistakes built on a foundation of lies. I mourn every life lost in this foolish neo-conservative misadventure. But that is a separate issue. What concerns me is the divergent cultures of the military and civilian world, and the galling sense of entitlement�of automatic heroism�that oozes from these young soldiers and their new brides. The benefits of military service are just that, benefits bestowed in return for service. These young people would be hard-pressed to find similar career opportunities or compensation packages in Civilian America, which is being gutted of good jobs by the gleeful plutocracy in Washington. For what it�s worth, I think military service is a fool�s bargain under an administration with such blatantly imperialist pretensions, and I do feel for our soldiers and their families. But in the final analysis, one must return to the most basic truth about the military: war is what it�s for. Though we would be grateful if generations of American forces enlisted and retired without ever seeing combat, combat is their job. It�s why the uniform exists in the first place.
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