Open sniping at vets again
Now that the wars have slipped off the national screen, it’s time for journalists to start taking pot shots at veterans of those wars, like they did during the Vietnam Era. Of course, I see it as penis envy, or something, wherein the journalists got a good look at how useless they really are during the wars, how the big contribution they thought they were going to have on changing the world is really just a popcorn fart in the Great Scheme of Things.
Two journalists in particular have popped up in my inbox. The first, Bill MacClellan at the Saint Louis Post Dispatch thinks that most of us don’t even deserve a military funeral;
Both the federal government and the state government are broke. So why are we providing military funeral honors for all veterans? It is a nice gesture we can’t afford.
Certainly, men and women killed in combat deserve full military honors. It’s a way for the country to say, “We honor the memory of those who died in our service.” These military honors — and the thought behind them — are intended to provide some solace for the families of the fallen.
But what about the guy who spends a couple of years in the military and then gets on with his life? Bear in mind that most veterans did nothing heroic. They served, and that’s laudable, but it hardly seems necessary to provide them all with military honors after they have died.
What an asshole. I mean seriously. Just because he never wore a uniform (at least he didn’t hide behind someone else’s service for his vacuous rant), what gives him the right to decide whose service is worthy of a military funeral? Just so Bill knows, in these times, just stepping up and wearing a uniform is ten times more worthy than the rest of you shitheels who snipe at us for our service.
Over at the Washington Post, Charles Lane, another opinionated fartknocker has decided that we don’t deserve Tricare;
Neither the recently adopted Senate budget plan for fiscal 2014, drafted by Democrats, nor the supposedly “austere” Ryan budget passed by the Republican House, touched Tricare. Hell hath no fury like a veterans’ lobby scorned, as senators and representatives of both parties know.
So do I! In anticipation of a lot of hate mail, I would note that I respect and honor America’s veterans. They should be well provided for, including reasonable health benefits. But no one — not even a veteran — is entitled to taxpayer support regardless of competing public needs.
In the case of Tricare, this is what the veterans’ lobbies have demanded of Congress, and what Congress has given them.
Yeah, both Lane and McClellan say that because we’re broke, we can’t afford these veterans’ benefits anymore. Mostly because they don’t know what the sacrifice to military service involves, although you can be certain that, given a chance to explain, they’ll tell you how their grandfathers stormed the beaches at Okinawa or some damn thing. We all had a choice whether we wanted to serve or not, but these things that they want to take from us are factors that led to the decision to continue service.
I dare either one of those so-called journalists to publicly disparage those people on Social Security for smoking pot, or anyone else who has made a living out of government benefits without giving anything back. Veterans have at least earned those benefits around the world, whether or not we’ve done anything that rises to MacClellan’s or Lane’s standards of valorous service worthy of these benefits.
ADDED: StrikeFO emails to let us know that Bill MacClellan claims in another article that he was “drafted” into the Marine Corps, so there’s a possibility that he was a Marine, but his wording in the article leaves me with some doubt. Some draftees were drafted a second time into the Marines in the 60s, but it was a very rare occurrence.
Category: Veterans Issues
Before the State of Oregon had a Funeral Honors team, I assisted in veteran funerals. I was on Title-10 orders at the time so I wasn’t being paid anything extra, and neither was my Readiness NCO. We would ask for volunteers from our unit (we had a handful that weren’t deployed for various reasons and a couple of Cadidiots). My Sergeant and I would pay for their lunch and we’d take our GSA 12-passenger van to get everyone there. There was a guy in a local JROTC unit who played Taps (an actual bugler) for us, too.
So, we never spent a penny of the government’s money on Veteran’s funerals. We spent a good deal of our own (fueling the 12-passenger, buying lunch for everyone, etc.), but we were honored to do it.
It was no different than the funerals for my seven brothers who lost their lives in Iraq during the deployment, except that the State sent their bugler and we could gas the van with the GSA card and offer everyone one day of pay.
This isn’t about heroics; it is about recognition. These people see uniforms, rifles, a 21-gun salute, and a bugler and think that all that stuff is a waste of money. However, I see a person being honored for doing their duty to the country, regardless of what those in the country thought at the time.
While in the 101st I did multiple funeral details. The only one we had a bugler at was for a CSM that is in the Ranger hall of fame.
Wait. Looking into this I guess I actually rate funeral honors. Wow, I sure do wish TAP class actually explained this stuff. I’ve learned something today.
I did ONE (01) burial detail while I was on active duty.
I was a buck sergeant (obviously, it was before I got busted to corporal for insubordination) in the Scout Platoon of the 2/12 Cavalry, 1st Cavalry Division, at Fort Hood, Texas.
When we got the assignment, we had a day or two to drill and rehearse.
We went to Dallas, Texas to bury a retired Army NCO from El Paso, Texas who had been killed in a vehicle accident (which, if I remember accurately, was due to him being drunk).
I don’t remember much about the events of that day except when we toured the funeral home, the guys were very emotional about seeing caskets for infants in a storage room.
All of the other burial details I’ve participated in was as a member of a veterans organization, in locations where no military resources were available.
In those instances, we volunteered our services free of charge, at our own expense, sometimes with volunteers who were themselves already so old and frail that they had great difficulty properly rendering the salute with the M-1 Garand rifle.
@40 – a number of years ago, I did a couple of contract IT projects for CNN. They were some of the worst experiences I’ve ever ad in my career. I refuse to watch CNN to this day.
Every person who served sacrificed more just by getting through basic training than these so-called “journalists” have done in their entire lives. Just giving up control over your life for the time of your enlistment is a sacrifice.
Nothing brings me to tears faster than hearing Taps.
@45, we were the MiTT in what became Barbarian, 1/24 IN’s battlespace down in Khan Bani Saad/COP Key West
It’s hilarious when libtards complain about veterans benefits when it’s such a tiny group that had to literally do something the vast majority of the public wouldn’t do to earn it. They have absolutely no problem giving away other people’s money to larger portions of society without condition though.
I believe McClellan is one of the few draftees who ended up in the Marines in the 60’s. Not sure where exactly I read that. Once he had a column where he claim being run off the road by a “angry Republican” on several occasions. He was one of the reasons I quit buying the “St.Louis Post-Dispatch”.
It’s possible McClellan was a USMC draftee. According to this source, the USMC took in somewhat over 42,000 total draftees during Vietnam.
@18 Arby,
Thanks for posting “Tommy”. It is one of my favorites and sums up the ingratitude of some people. I am also reminded of the end of Nicholson’s speech in “A Few Good Men”:
“I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom I provide, then questions the manner in which I provide it! I’d rather you just said thank you and went on your way. Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a weapon and stand a post. Either way, I don’t give a damn what you think you’re entitled to!”
These bastards need to have a nice big cup of STFU and think before they go opening their cockholsters (picked that one up here, thanks guys!) And just to help them out…….
http://humour.200ok.com.au/image_nicebigcup.html
Okay heres a link where he says he was drafted into the Corp:
http://www.stlmag.com/St-Louis-Magazine/July-2009/A-Conversation-with-Bill-McClellan/
What traits does he despise? ‘Self-righteousness. Flat-out lying, that’s hard to handle. And mean-spiritedness. I’ll think, “Geez, have you no empathy at all?”
And this blowhard is pickin’ on vets? What a phony.
Heck, let’s pull a FOIA on this guy and see if he really did serve. If it turns out he didn’t, he wouldn’t be the first public figure to get caught in this type of a lie.
Here are three references to McClellan being a Marine. The first one is the opening sentence in a piece he wrote for his rag on 20 Dec 2010.
“During the long and contentious debate about gays serving openly in the military, I have sometimes been asked if I knew any gays when I was in the Marine Corps.” -McCLellan
http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/columns/bill-mcclellan/mcclellan-road-won-t-always-be-bumpy-for-gays-in/article_5420a0ca-256a-5f3e-a6fb-8ed4e0ab2374.html
2011: “St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist, author, Donnybrook television show regular and U.S. Marine Corps veteran Bill McClellan will be guest speaker at the Waterloo gathering.”
http://www.mocountyillinois.com/newsletters/2011%20ENewsletters/05_May/20110527.htm
2010: [McClellan]grew up in Chicago, attended the University of Illinois and Arizona State University and served in the Marine Corps. He and his wife Mary have two grown children. After working as a night reporter in Phoenix, he came to the Post-Dispatch in 1980, wrote entertainment listings, was a night police reporter and became a columnist in 1983. He also is a regular commentator on Channel 9’s Donnybrook.
Read more: http://interact.stltoday.com/pr/arts-entertainment/PR11141012264832#ixzz2OsvhjX9F
May I say, that if it’s true that he served in the Marine Corps, F— him and if it’s not true,F— him. Thank you.
One last thing. McClellan says that what really rankles him are the negative, hateful comments that people sometimes post online. So, really, please save Billy his feelings and respect his sensibilities and say nothing that might bother or upset him.
@66 – Screw that!
#66: is fuck him and the horse he rode in on insensitive? I’m a geezer and trying to get in touch with my inner feelings (which usually is a fart…I hope, but sometimes not and I crap my pants).
Just to add my contribution to the pile-on (you guys are going to have to find someone who knows Spanish to translate):
Que se vaya a la chingada ese pinche hijo de su re-puta madre!
That’s not hateful or insensitive is it? 😉
@68, Shouldn’t that be ‘the dog he rode in on’? Just sayin’.
Oh and as for that fuckstick Charles Lane, how about we cut health insurance for all civilian government employees first? The military continues to be the first thing those idiots in Washington cut, even though defense is one of the few specifically enumerated powers listed in the Constitution. Hell, most of these government departments are completely unnecessary (Dept. of Education, anyone?). Seriously, as much crap as the government wastes money on, the only thing this idiot can think of to save money is screwing over military personnel and their families? Let’s cut entitlements for those welfare leaches and see where that takes us. I earned my benefits as have all who have served honorably; they are not “entitlements” since we had to EARN them!
[…] Via This Ain’t Hell: […]
He was on Bill Orielly’s show tonight trying to portray that he’s some budget hawk and just happened to use this example instead. He also discredited his Vietnam service outright and believes the government doesn’t owe any veteran anything beyond the GI Bill because he used that. He said that instead of tax payers veteran organizations should put the money up for services instead. This dude has personal issues regarding his own service.
Sj says, “I’m a geezer and trying to get in touch with my inner feelings (which usually is a fart…I hope, but sometimes not and I crap my pants).”
That’s a keeper.
[…] Yesterday, we wrote about Bill MacClellan of the Saint Louis Post Dispatch who claims that most veterans don’t do anything heroic, so they don’t deserve a government-funded funeral. Today, he goes back for another bite at that turd; […]
My father, passed six years ago. He was retired Navy (PH1), spent two years in Vietnam. At his funeral, we had the Marine Corps league detachment to render honors, which they did, crisp and precise..not only to honor a veteran, but their friend as they all belonged to the same AMVETS post my father had been a life member of. The local Navy Reserve unit sent two representatives for the purpose of folding/presenting the flag. It isn’t only about “solace” for the family. Seeing the Navy Captain, in his dress uniform, kneeling in front of my Mom, saying “On behalf of the President of the United States and with the gratitude of a thankful nation, please accept this flag in honor of your husband’s faithful service.” was about honoring my Mom, for sacrifices she made during my Dad’s service. If these idiot reporters want to cut costs, there are hundreds of ways to do it. Screwing with the final recognition a veteran and their family gets, is not one of them.