Veterans/Troops become a political force

We are living in historic times. We finally have a Democrat president and a Democrat Congress that supports veterans and that, at least in some small way, support our troops while they’re engaged with a foreign enemy. Returning troops are getting the medical attention they deserve in the president’s new budget. Of course, the vacuous, specious argument I read at some so-called “nonpartisan” veteran organizations is that Democrats care more about the troops than Republicans. While that may be true at the moment, it’s only become true in the last few months.

This morning, the Stars and Stripes trumpets the DoD’s $500 billion budget;

The proposal – part of President Barack Obama’s $3.4 trillion budget for fiscal 2010 – includes cuts to major weapons systems detailed last month and was billed as a “reform budget” by defense officials.

But it also has new increases in troops Basic Allowance for Housing (6 percent) and Basic Allowance for Subsistence (5 percent) to go along with a 2.9 percent pay raise for all military personnel. House and Senate leaders have already promised to bump that to 3.4 percent.

The plan also promises more money for wounded warrior support and no cuts in military health care services.

“This is a long-term commitment by the department to take care of our people,” said Vice Admiral P. Stephen Stanley, director of force structure for the Joint Staff. “Those people who have gone forward and been affected, been injured, we’re going to take care of them. We’re going to take care of our families.

That’s good news – pay raises, housing allowance increases, living facility improvements. That’s quite a difference from when my son was born in a forty-year-old wooden World War II hospital that had been intended to be temporary when it was built. That hospital was so bad that it made an appearance on “60 Minutes” the following year.

So what has changed that Democrats have finally started paying attention to the needs of the troops suddenly? Because veterans have become a political force. While many veterans of WWII and Koreas sat out the Vietnam War on the sidelines for whatever reason, the Vietnam War veterans have refused to sit by while this wars’ troops get the same treatment.

Instead of watching what the news organizations feed them on TV and standing by while old hippies and new anarchists spit on the troops, call them babykillers and allowing twisted, untrue stories to circulate about our troops’ behavior in combat, organizations like Patriot Guard Riders, Gathering of Eagles, Band of Mothers and Eagles Up use the same tactics of the Left to squelch behavior that had been tolerated in the ’60s.

When Code Pink decided to protest outside of Walter Reed when wounded troops arrived there, it took only a few days for Free Republic to assembled a larger number of supporters to drown out the hippies. When ANSWER marched on the Pentagon, within a few weeks, thousands of veterans descended on Washington to steal ANSWER’s stage and demonstrate to those serving overseas that they weren’t alone.

We now have websites like Blackfive, The Long War Journal and Michael Yon who have put people on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan who brought us the stories to our living rooms that the media with it’s Democrat-leaning agenda refused to tell America. That was especially important in the last two years when the media went dark on the success of the ‘Surge”.

Also, in the 60s, some of the more traditional Veterans Service Organizations like the VFW had denied membership to returning Vietnam veterans. During this war, the VSOs have taken the lead in the proper treatment of returning veterans. The American Legion, especially, has led the VSOs in turning back legislation from this administration that would harm returning troops and is actively lobbying for better treatment. The VSOs have become more than a cheap place to drink PBR and swap war stories.

In short, veterans have come into their own as a political force to be reckoned with – we always knew it was possible with the millions of living military veterans and the millions more who lay at rest as a testament to our dedication to this country.

However, we know how the party which currently controls the purse strings would rather treat veterans and how they’d rather take our earned benefits to pay off welfare queens and drug addicts for their votes instead, so even though we have arrived, it will take continued vigilance so that we don’t lose the voice we’ve built over the last decade.

Category: Antiwar crowd, Barack Obama/Joe Biden, Politics