No snark here. With photos of thousands dying in post-911 above the fold front pages, perhaps the Daily News is not totally trolling for sickos. The Gawker piece raises some good points on how hiding this kind of stuff perhaps makes it more difficult to get the damned electeds to do something, anything, about gun violence in this country.
And that's the only lesson our military and other leaders learned fro Vietnam that they applied in Iraq: Keep the horror away from the public so the support doesn't dwindle. Or at least doesn't dwindle as quickly.
As a very unwilling draftee and Veetnahm vet who went on to a career in said military-industrial complex, I agree with the idea of shared service, but it need not all be in endless foreign wars: low-skill-level work in schools, city governments and hospitals, or modern versions of the Civilian Conservation Corps and Works Progress Administration, could be given benefits, pensions, VA medical care, etc, for those who stay in long enough to earn them.
But the pernicious individualism the Republican Party retails ("Why should I pay for someone else's health care?") makes this all seem crazy and/or impossible.
My job as a contractor was helping military installations get better facilities, and yes, they are never as good as they should be, but they are a lot better than they were when I started in '82 and everybody was in crappy old "temporary" buildings from WW II.
As for low pay…well that's why they call it "service."
![41jzZC6j0mL._SY355_[1]](http://wonkville.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/41jzZC6j0mL._SY355_1.jpg)
No snark here. With photos of thousands dying in post-911 above the fold front pages, perhaps the Daily News is not totally trolling for sickos. The Gawker piece raises some good points on how hiding this kind of stuff perhaps makes it more difficult to get the damned electeds to do something, anything, about gun violence in this country.
Reality is ugly. If the 2nd Amendment (or a reason to go to War) is so important, then EVERYONE should have to see the repercussions of that decision.
If what you see terrifies you, then….
And that's the only lesson our military and other leaders learned fro Vietnam that they applied in Iraq: Keep the horror away from the public so the support doesn't dwindle. Or at least doesn't dwindle as quickly.
And in a way, the last.
As a very unwilling draftee and Veetnahm vet who went on to a career in said military-industrial complex, I agree with the idea of shared service, but it need not all be in endless foreign wars: low-skill-level work in schools, city governments and hospitals, or modern versions of the Civilian Conservation Corps and Works Progress Administration, could be given benefits, pensions, VA medical care, etc, for those who stay in long enough to earn them.
But the pernicious individualism the Republican Party retails ("Why should I pay for someone else's health care?") makes this all seem crazy and/or impossible.
My job as a contractor was helping military installations get better facilities, and yes, they are never as good as they should be, but they are a lot better than they were when I started in '82 and everybody was in crappy old "temporary" buildings from WW II.
As for low pay…well that's why they call it "service."