If this is what “Sacred Trust” looks like, we’re in trouble
I can see the letter now.
Dear Wounded Veteran,
Thank you for your service. Frightfully sorry about your grievous wounds. Here is your bill. Please submit this to your insurance carrier and provide proof of submittal within 30 days or we will be forced to file a lein against any property you may own.
I am also happy to announce your enrollment in our “Wounded Warriors Club.” With your free enrollment in this club you will receive discount coupons to such attractions as Walt Disney World, and Branson, MO, and discounts on auto insurance, as well as free dinner at Golden Corral once a year. You will be receiving your complimentary purple beret signifying your elite status as an American Wounded Warrior within ten days. I would like to personally congratulate you on your free club membership and remind you that your club membership is dependent upon maintaining separate health insurance and keeping your account balance at zero.
Again, please accept my sincere gratitude for your sacrifice and a reminder that your responsible management of medical care for your wounds is making a great contribution to our economic recovery.
Respectfully,
GEN(R) Eric Shinseki,
Secretary of Veterans Affairs
During the presidential campaign of 2008, Sen. John McCain was successfully cast as being bad for veterans. I wonder if this was because he was cautious to promise only what he felt that he could deliver. It seems that the other candidate was not at all afraid to promise things which he had no intention of delivering in order to garner a few more votes.
Well, the honeymoon is over, baby, and I want a divorce already.
In a nation where health care is now a “right,” or something that does not have to be earned or provided by an individual for him or herself and their family, there are a few who have earned that priveledge, and to whom there was a promise made. Here is my paraphrase of that promise:
This nation appreciates your service and your going in harm’s way for those of us who cannot or will not. We understand that you risk much, including disfiguring wounds, loss of limb and eyesight, and death. In return, we will provide you with the best protection money can buy, and if something terrible happens to you, we will care for you in gratitude for your service and in recognition of your sacrfice for our good. We have got your back.
These words are only a paraphrase of our conversation with the country that we love enough to put our lives on the line for. Most of us who wear a uniform have lost friends and loved ones. Many of us have scars that are seen and unseen. We are left unprotected against the “free speech” of others who have the right to express the thought that we are chumps for having ideals and for having the draconian pride to put on a uniform and feel like it means something. We are excoriated by the very friends of the man who used those lines to literally reprimand his political opponent as if he should know better than to skimp on entitlements to veterans. Now this same politician seeks to take from the very veterans who have given a fuller measure of themselves than any others save our honored dead.
With this initiative, the “Sacred Trust” has been broken by the man who made it a dagger with which to politically stab his opponent. Once that wound, one of many, was inflicted, that dagger of political expedience was broken to form a tool with which to pick the lock on one more box of treasure with which to further the dreams of a would-be saviour.
I do not know if this initiative will come to fruition. I do not care. The fact that such a man, a man who used as one of his cries, “My opponent will not care for our veterans, to whom we owe so much,” would even raise this concept is shameful in the extreme.
There are many potential ramifications to such a policy shift, and none of them are good for veterans. Employability, financial hardship and all of the resulting damage that may occur are all there… but the worst has already been done. We now have a Commander-in-Chief who does not “have our backs” whether he pulls this one off or not.
God help us all.
Posted on March 18th, 2009 by Andy Wahl
Filed under: Uncategorized
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