^ Not sure if this was in response to me, but let me clarify – I’m not vilifying individual soldiers. I’m opposed to the murder-for-hire relationship and legitimizing the path to sucking people into the life.
@janbb: “The fight for universal healthcare doesn’t negate the need for veteran’s benefits.”
That’s where we disagree. And we also disagree on why we don’t have single-payer today. But I think it’s important to understand that I’m not merely saying “if we all can’t have it, then veterans shouldn’t have it either”. Giving veterans benefits and respect is like giving people benefits because they robbed a convenient store and ended up killing the cashier. There may have been a real reason why they were so desperate that they needed the money, and they may have gone into the store with good intentions. But that doesn’t mean we should support that. What we should be doing is fighting against the root cause of those conditions which led the person to do what they did.
I just lost my father a few months ago to Parkinson’s, which the VA covered completely because he was in Vietnam and was exposed to agent orange. My father was 72 and had been sick and deteriorating for 10 years. It was fucking brutal, and I’m glad he had medical coverage. But killing people in a foreign land (and nearly getting blown up) doesn’t make him any more worthy of that coverage. And to support him having coverage doesn’t necessarily hurt my efforts to turn the US into a legitimate civilized country and have actual healthcare. But it does support a system where people feel that the military is a choice that has material benefits. It shouldn’t.
I wouldn’t support a system that rewarded people who murdered bodega cashiers or US military soldiers or veterans, even if the people in both cases did what they did out of financial necessity. Doing so would encourage behavior that I want to reduce.