Support The Troops

Gosh - when you send people to fight 2 wars over 10 or 12 years, and they have to go thru 2 or 3 or 5 or 8 deployments of 15 - 30 months at a time, some of them will need healthcare for a very long time after they get back, and some of them will need an ever-increasing level of care because their injuries turn out to be progressive or occult or degenerative in nature.

USA Today - A staggering 45% of the 1.6 million veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are now seeking compensation for injuries they say are service-related. That is more than double the estimate of 21% who filed such claims after the Gulf War in the early 1990s, top government officials told the Associated Press.

What's more, these new veterans are claiming eight to nine ailments on average, and the most recent ones over the last year are claiming 11 to 14. By comparison, Vietnam veterans are currently receiving compensation for fewer than four, on average, and those from World War II and Korea just two.

This seems to come as no big surprise to lot of us - you know, the ones who actually think about shit.

But one of the things I probably should've seen coming and didn't was that now the Anti-Entitlements crowd is pissin' and moanin' about "veterans gaming the system".  Well, I'm gonna go with my first reaction on this one: Fuck you. OK, so yeah - some of that's gonna happen.  Big fuckin' deal.  You're the bunch of posturing chickenhawks who wanted all this war shit in the first place; you guys are always screechin' about fallen heroes; and you're the pricks who're always posting all that maudlin shit about what we all owe to the soldiers - well now it's time to pony up, cupcake.  And where are you?  You're nowhere.  You're hiding behind the cutesy little magnetic ribbons on your SUV.  You're pretending to care about what happens to these men and women by spending a good 15 seconds every few days posting some stupidly drippy bumper-sticker sentiment on your facebook page.  But you're out now - it's just too obvious that by balking at the real cost of your war-mongering, you reveal for all to see that you care more about your ideology than you do about the people you claim make this country great.

I'll say it again in case you missed it:  fuck you.