Opinion: Vet pleads for coddling to stop
By Richard Allen Smith, Esquire
For the last 14 years, uniformed Americans have been in some of the most challenging conditions imaginable. We’ve parachuted into Iraq, marched wearily through the mountains of Tora Bora, and slept in s— at Musa Qala. We’ve toppled dictators, trained counterterrorism forces in Africa, and killed the most dangerous terrorist in the world. And then, too many of us have come home and whined about every minuscule slight, offense, or lapse in judgment perpetrated against us while indulging in some of the most decadent of accommodations.
We’ve got to stop.
It’s not entirely the fault of 21st century veterans that we demand to have our egos coddled. The desire early on to suppress dissent for the poorly justified conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, plus a sense of collective guilt for the shameful treatment of Vietnam veterans, forced our nation to open its proverbial arms and wrap us veterans in soft, star-spangled blankets.
That is how we arrived at a place in American society where the roughest men and women our country can produce are babysat. Our supermarkets have reserved veteran parking spaces, despite handicapped spaces already existing for any veteran who actually needs accommodation. We grandstand for veteran employment programs without considering that the veteran unemployment rate is actually less than that of the general population. We rant about the broken promise of disability compensation while the Department of Veterans Affairs is awarding disability claims at the fastest rate in history. Even with all these faux controversies, we still manage to find time for manufactured outrage about gym wear and TV ratings gambits.
there is not currently a draft in the u.s. it’s a choice to enter the military.
Like the Scandinavian countries there should be a minimum two-year requirement to serve it would fix a lot of these dumb kids
I lived in Norway for a short time the Scandinavian countries have the highest rate of education and quality-of-life in the world
It is a mistake to compare most other countries especially Scandinavia with the US.
They have a fraction of the population and even less of the geographical area. The management issues are simple compared to the US.
I don’t understand what this has to do with the article about military veterans.
I agree with most of this article’s premises.
Our volunteer army does not seem to attract a well rounded cross section of men and women, particularly in the education sense.
I would clearly support some form of government service requirement as many countries do, if the US was not so terminally involved in policing the rest of the world. Education in areas not related to killing one another should be part of the equation.
Volunteering for a sure trip to the violent middle east is not a reasonable choice for anyone not starving and desperate, since that conflict seems certain to never end.
Trying to force our faded democratic values and our “money rules all” government on countries and people who were surviving ok the way they were is not working and should be stopped.
Cleaning up your own house first before you go criticizing other peoples housekeeping and forcing your questionable solutions on them would be a good place to start.
There are countries with totalitarian regimes that arguably have as good a quality of life as we do, and certainly no worse human rights records than the US does.
I believe that the U.S. should have a two-year requirement for all physically and mentally non-disabled young people at an age no later than 19-years to provide service to their country in the military where they don’t get to live with their parent(s). That would help develop responsibility and maturity in many young people and it would place all politicians on notice that if they want to start a war, a police action, or whatever else they’d like to call it that their own children would be in harm’s way and subject to being shot at and blown up along with everyone elses kids. Perhaps then they’d exercise more caution in policing the rest of the world.