I’m bumping this thread because of an update to the situation.
The news this morning reported the massive generosity of the American people. Walter Reed has been swamped with phone cards, sweat suits, CD players, DVDs, personal care items, and every other thing a wounded soldier could possibly need.
They have far more stuff than can be used right now, and have asked people to stop their donations, at least for the time being.
I’m reminded of all the body armor that went over to Iraq, purchased and sent by private parties.
If the yellow-ribbon-fetish crowd can be guilt-tripped into providing something simply by reading spam e-mail, what reasonable person can expect the Defense Department to foot the bill for it?
If I was Rumsfeld I would jump on this. I think that “the people” are more than willing to personally ensure that their kids in uniform have, say, food.
Are times tough? Good golly, yes! Is Mom’s cooking better than an MRE? You bet it is!
My thoughts as well. In fact, in 23 years of military service, I never asked for, nor was I given, donations of anything. I chose the life, and I coped with the low pay. I would have resented anyone considering me to be a charity case.
It’s not like these soilders arn’t getting paid. We just had a 9.0 earthquake that killed more than 45,000 people. Your $40.00 could provide living expenses for six months for a fisher family whose breadwinner got swept to sea and whose house washed away. It can provide millions of gallons of clean water to prevent people from dying of cholera and other epidemics that are expected to hit any day now. It can buy dozens of long-distance train tickets so that orphaned children can stay with a family member rather than fending for themselves on the street.
Or it can go to letting a guy that gets paid at least a thousand bucks a month gab on the phone to his girlfriend for an hour.
Or talk to his wife and children when he’s not home for them on Christmas morning because he’s risking his life for some stupid war, perhaps.
:dubious:
I was away from my family because of work this Christmas. I did what everyone else does- I bought a phonecard and called them. Surely the poor guy with three small kids and a wife can come up with twenty bucks for a phone card. Yes, phone cards are expensive. Phones are an expensive form of communication. Luckly service people have access to mail and email for everyday communication.
I’m not saying it doesn’t suck to be a soilder, but on the “tragic-o-meter”, people getting salaries having to pay for their own phone calls rates somewhere above the fact that we don’t substidize prom dresses. There are people dieing right now as we speak who can be saved with forty dollars. Asia has just been hit with one of the worst disasters imaginable and what is a small amount of money to us can directly save lives. And yet the cause-of-the-moment is phone cards. Suddenly everyone is outraged and the the contributions are flooding in. It bothers me how America’s purses open widely for the most trivial causes as long as it involves Americans- especially middle class Americans that seem like they’d be able to fend for themselves, but we ignore avenues in which our contributions can make a real difference in the world.
Perhaps because the pay for the average soldier isn’t quite as high as you seem to think it is. And that perhaps phone cards should be something that’s included as part of their pay.
And because not everyone has to contribute to the same cause. I’m so sick of this-“That charity is stupid-so and so is much worse off, blah blah blah.” Not that you were necessarily doing that, but a lot of people DO, and it pisses me off.
Besides, it probably was a lot less for you to call your family* who are what-three hours away, than it is for someone in fucking Iraq to make an overseas phone call in the middle of a freaking war zone.
*[sub]Please, do NOT turn this into another one of your poor pitiful me laments. [/sub]
Another thing to remember is that I doubt many families can budget for sudden, long term stints overseas. Especially for those who are in the Guard, and ended up leaving behind jobs that payed them a hell of a lot more than the Guard does, and are still there 2 years later.
Can I also remind posters to this thread that we are NOT talking about Joe GI who is walking around at his duty post, and as cheerful as any guy away from home/family and with people intent on killing him can be?
This is about soldiers who were so severely injured that they have been shipped home and are now confined to a hospital for at least fairly long stretches. These are guys who have been blinded, suffered massive burns, lost a limb or two or more…
I’ve never been ‘injured’ to that extent, but I have gone through a severe illness – operations, recovery time in hospital, followup chemo and radiation over a couple of months – and I expect the mental effect on the soldiers is a bit like I experienced only much much worse, of course. And what I needed was support from those I loved/loved me. I needed to talk with them, much more often than I did in my ordinary life before that. I can only imagine how much a man who has suffered a massive, life-changing injury, can need to be reassured by his wife (for example) that she still loves and values him and that, no, she won’t be repulsed by his scars, and god no it wouldn’t be better for everyone if he just crawled off into some hole somewhere to die. You know?
So, even sven, I’m sorry you didn’t get to be with your loved ones at Christmas. But unless the reason is that, oh, you were violently mugged and were in a hospital recuperating from being beaten and stabbed, I really don’t think your need was anything more than a shadow of what these wounded soldiers experience.
As for the victims of the tsunami, that’s an entirely different cause, and arose later. What, do you think people should have refused to donate to these soldiers in the run up to Christmas on the chance that some worse tragedy would strike other people later?
Hmmm. Maybe I should reconsider my donation to the relief cause now. After all, maybe a giant meteor will crash into China setting off WORSE earthquakes and firestorms, and then THOSE people will need my money worse.
You can’t think that way, or you’ll never help anyone with anything ever. Give what you can afford to appeals that speak to you now. And then give what you can afford to the next one. And the one after that.
Most of us can “care” about more than one cause.
I don’t know of people here realize the extent of the support that the soldiers at Walter Reed are getting. The volunteers there are doing a superb job.
It is so good that, in a great many cases, if a soldier’s family cannot afford to come to Washington to see him, corporate or private charity will get plane tickets to them so they can come.
Volunteers have brought ambulatory patients home for Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner, as well as organizing museum trips and visits to Congress and the Pentagon. Verizon was asked in one case to provide a BlackBerry to a soldier with hearing loss, who couldn’t call home. They happily did so.
Similar support is being provided to Marines and sailors at Bethesda Naval Hospital.