REPRESENTING VETS: WHO ARE WE?

VETERANS ARE THE MOST DIVERSE GROUP IN THE WORLD

FODDER FOR POLTICAL FOOLS, SOMETIMES ABANDONED, SOMETIMES HATED

ALWAYS READY TO GIVE ALL

By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER

DISUNITY AMONG VETERANS:  That’s how we should be described.  Retirees push to have veteran funding cut and retiree benefits increased.  Retired officers groups are almost all political and very little "veteran."  Old line service organizations run bars, conventions and wear funny hats but do less and less each year for veterans. 

With all the baloney and hoolah about "heroes," any vet without a Medal of Honor is treated like horse manure.  Generations of liars, starting before the Civil War, all with more and more inventive war stories, have turned vet against vet and pushed many into support of anti-American causes.

The American Legion started out as a fascist organization supporting Mussolini, then Hitler.  Veterans then and even now, needed so much to feel a part of something, either anti-Communist or anti-Terrorist, that they became pro-Fascist.  There is little money out there supporting democracy but tons out there supporting Fascism, the big business war on labor unions and the rights of common Americans.  Anyone dumb enough to join the Marine Corps is not someone famous for carefully reading between the lines.  I stand guilty on that part myself.

THE "NON-VETERAN" PUBLIC, OUTSIDERS ALL:  Military service should never describe who a person is.  I am a parent, pet owner or gun enthusiast but "military" is a job.  Doctors and lawyers who see that as "who" they are have been a joke for years.  My lawyer is a scout leader that fixes old cars.

Veterans should be different, but not that different.  We know war, some of us, truthfully, only a few of us, and many more of us know "the system," the bureaucracy meant to care for our wounds and illnesses brought on by the rigors of war and dangerous military occupations.

Many veterans are "freeloaders," taking advantage of benefits.  Military retirees (me included) live a life of free plane flights, military hotels and private resorts along with healthy pensions.  However, compared to Congress or some top union jobs, our benefits are a joke. 

Many members of the public hate the benefits some of us get or they look on the military as a permanent "underclass" of "illiterates" and "racial/ethnic" inferiors hiding in the military, living off tax payer money.  This view is common, too common but seldom admitted to.

WHO SHOULD VETERANS BE, WHAT IS OUR REAL DUTY:  To those of us who are combat vets, some things will always be clear.  We help fellow vets as though they were members of our own units, fighting beside us.  As a VSO (Veteran Service Officer) I handle claims for several people I fight with continually over politics.  The insane and unfair treatment some veterans get from our government is beyond imagination.  They know only other veterans care, not their members of Congress or the VA.  In our hearts, real vets know politics is too often a hobby, some reason to look for someone to blame because we, ourselves are angry, sometimes at ourselves, our country or anything.

We may fight "politics" but any of us worth his salt, knows Washington DC is the "freeloader" capital of the world.

VETERANS, THE MILITARY AND POLITICS:  The military, itself, is by law banned from any political activity.  This means that retirees spent their entire careers out of the political arena or involved in an illegal fashion.  This is too often the case.

Veterans are different.  They are free to be politically active once leaving the service but are often unprepared for this responsiblility.  Military service, in itself, is totalitarian, undemocratic and builds dependence on government and stifles individual thought.  Military veterans, by nature, make our worst citizens politically, until and if they learn to question authority, the basis of all freedom.

For this very reason, totalitarian organizations often use military veterans as dupes to fight freedom loving and democratic forces that support our Constitution and form of government.  There is a long history of this.  The worst instances were during the 20s, when veterans were used as thugs to break labor unions, based on accusations that all unions were communist.

In reality, leaders of veterans organizations were bribed by factory owners wanting to keep wages down and eliminate free market competition.  War veterans made excellent mercenaries working for these forces, later learned to have been tied to Fascist groups in Italy and Germany we later had to fight. 

One day you are wearing a flag pin in your label, cheering on a "patriot" and the next day you find him on trial for treason or learn he was working for the enemy all along.  Even learning late is still learning.

Again, during the 50s, veterans groups were taken over by anti-Communist elements that were, in reality, groups who opposed workers rights and the civil rights or womens rights movements.  Thus, veterans, by accident, were again duped into working against movements that are now seen as the most positive of that era and whose accomplishments, even against opposition by veterans groups, are a source of pride for the vast majority of Americans.

However, there would never have been a civil rights movement without the thousands of black veterans who fought in World War 2.  There were more than a few white vets supporting them, marching along side them. 

Today, as in the "Red Scare" era of anti-unionism or the McCarthy era when liars and demagogues were allowed to attack our greatest heroes until finally discredited themsleves, some veterans, seeking to feel useful as "patriotic" and "anti-terrorist" have supported totalitarian groups in America, simply out of a need to belong and feel useful, even if, in the end, they do more harm than good. 

That era, the shameful McCarthy era, ended, but many veterans groups formed their political bases then and have stuck to those reviled beliefs, even after America has moved on.  Thus, politicians who may be thrown out of office or have the lowest popularity in history can be cheered as heroes by some veterans groups.  Those groups simply got out of step with America and haven’t found their way back.

VETERANS AS VICTIMS:  For decades, veterans have joined and supported organizations that have done little to help them or even supported politicians who have continually voted against veterans funding.  Like the exploitation of Blacks by Carpet Baggers from the North, after the Civil War, political groups have managed to garner support for veterans by promising patriotism but, in the end, betraying everything they promised.

Veterans aren’t the only ones.  I can’t think of any American who wouldn’t like to "take back a vote" at some point. 

OUR MILITARY, PATRIOTISM OR TYRANNY:  Our military has been based on a system established in the Middle Ages, separating "enlisted and "officers" in social classes, much as spoken of by Karl Marx.  As our military functions outside Constitutional law and recognized legal process, it has been able to abuse its power over the individual too often.

For every great military leader, there have been 4 that have been poorly qualified or whose social background has aligned them more with enemies of freedom than its defenders.  No organization is perfect.  An organization designed at the start to reward heroes during war and cowards during peace is going to suffer from schizophrenia.  Welcome to the American military.

Our military was able to institute "Stop Loss" programs, not unlike the "press gangs" used by the British that Americans went to war to fight against in 1812.  Now we have become exactly like the enemy we fought.

Rabble rousers, tied to war profiteers have used the threats of "collaborator" – "Soft on Communism" – "Pro Terrorist" – "Peacenik" and others to suppress needed oversight of a military grown fat and soft on privilege, huge pensions, and a real eschelon lifestyle more like that of royalty than anything else.

MARRIAGE OF CORRUPTION:  A policy that has allowed military procurement officers to take jobs at the companies they were paid to "watch over" has bred generations of corruption and deceit in the miltary and its suppliers.

Defective and overpriced weapons and theft at every level have become the norm.

The powerful economic influence of this group has influenced foreign policy and helped start wars since 1898 with our invasion of Cuba at the behest of "yellow journalists" and war profiteers. 

Most Americans believe few wars would start or last very long if companies that grow rich on war were subjected to public scrutiiny instead of being allowed to buy powerful friends in our military and government.

PEACE AS A DIRTY WORD: Decades of continual propaganda has made the word "peace" itself both unpatriotic and unmanly.  The idea of not sending a generation of children to fight "the enemy of the day" whoever that turns out to be, is now unthinkable.

If one enemy threatens to surrender, tiring of war with the biggest military power in world history, a list of potential enemies, all "harboring terrorists" or "planning to build WMD’s" is there to draw on.  The list, at times, can be dozens of countries deep and can include, as with Iraq, former allies.

Any country with oil or any other natural resource of value to a corporation with powerful lobbyists in Washington lives in terror of American invasion.

This is the reality the world faces today.  Don’t kid yourself about it.

Gordon Duff is a Marine combat veteran and regular contributor on political and social issues.