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Enlisted Single Tour All but Ignored

By Joe Harty

It goes without saying that the majority—perhaps as much as 80%—of the manpower supplied to American armed forces are in and out of duty, while the few benefits remaining focus on lifers and officers. I contend that all veterans deserve benefits for having served. I base this on all historical reports of the aftereffects documented in mental-heath and prison data which bear witness to how the encounter between American young people has instant (job placement) and lifelong effects (to be old getting into the market, late to get married) that cut back competing with their peers that do not serve.

I make this point for veterans to convey this bit of information to their civilian relatives and public sources who seek to understand the intricate weave that the military has woven for us who serve. To draw them into our dilemma of doing the ugly jobs, suffering insulting pay, little recognition and disrespect by corporations who pay millions, cut from veterans' benefits to give money to subcontractors,who get $100,000 yearly to do the same job we do—who are also protected from punishment when atrocities like Abu Graibh surface. I believe veterans should put aside their politics for everything but veterans' issue and home defense, so as to save what little there is available and to take care of our brothers.

The last five years of antimilitary behavior by a GOP-ruled House and Senate, coupled with the passing of the PATRIOT Act I and II and their getting ready to install rules so they can violate the 1887 Posse Comitatus Act is a doomsday warning. See, the Posse Comitatus Act is supposed to stop the use of our troops inside of America, against our own people. For history buffs, I suggest reading "Seven Days in May," a book made into a movie about the international corporate conspiracy with our military to exercise a coup d'état on our federal system, in effect bringing us under a police state.

I believe that it makes the argument and shows the outline of things the civilian population has no knowledge of that can happen, which has only been known by those who serve up until now. Failing to get anyone to read this book, I would aim their interest to a speech by a Republican, Ike, who warned us in the late 1950s about the growing danger of the military-industrial complex, even then a bulging mutant growing geometrically since the end of World War II. Every veteran should explain the military appraisals of the recent acts in comparison with how we operate overseas.

It is this veteran's greatest fear that the rights of E Pluribus Unum days are numbered, that soon troops will be in control of cities, will regulate movement across state borders, that politically left and Democratic persons will be put in a pound for special treatment; secular schools, prisons and the military will be inundated with Christian dogma in place of science and debate.

As veterans, we all took an oath to protect this country against all enemies, foreign or domestic: it says that as well in the first paragraph of the preamble of the Constitution.

Rights, once lost, are rarely reinstated by a dictatorship, which is what a police state is: the seizing of all enforcement of the law by the military. Unlike civilian rule, it's a little short on due process; it requires none, being arbitrary and rigid in its determination of guilt. Please read this book, or at least read Ike's last speech. It could save our youth from having to trust anyone over twenty, while saving their lives! Knowledge is power; let's see if our knowledge can help other voters to think a little clearer.