Nice of you to use a genuine problem that people may, you know, actually have a genuine concern about, and use it to score partisan bashing points. People like you would rather bash libruls, even if it means military people get to suffer for it.
Is there a reason they would do something like this?
Because quite frankly, much of the stuff Bush and his pet Congress did between 9/11 and the recent election would have been impossible to believe, a mere six years ago. If you went back in time to 2000, and warned people about Bush in what is now a factual manner, you’d be accused not of partisan hackery, but of crazed paranoia.
But the fact that they actually did it isn’t a reason to believe anyone else besides them would.
As far as the Dems go, we can look at Clinton’s cleanup of the VA to note that it is not, in and of itself, verboten for a Dem politician to help soldiers. But aside from that, an issue like this touches way too many Dem constituencies (blue collar, veterans, inner city, minorities) for any Dem to ignore. Even those radical loonies like Michael Moore and MoveOn wouldn’t let something like this slide under a Dem administration. Given how disorganized the Dem heirarchy is, even the most cynical politician wouldn’t be able to ignore the issue. But even without that pressure, I have a hard time imagining any of the major Dem politicians trying to sweep this under the rug.
There are Republicans who I think would take the issue seriously. If Bob Dole were president, I’m sure the ass-kicking would have started a long time ago. But you need only look at this thread and the right-wing noise machine to know that for certain partisans, it’s more important to bash liberals than to put anyone’s feet to the flame on this.
Nope, it isn’t verboten for Democrats to help soldiers. However, those cleanups at the VA scarcely touched DoD medicine, didn’t they?
Those conditions at Walter Reed are obviously longstanding ones on the face of it, and other military hospitals are worse off, and have been for a long time. And I was careful to lay the blame on both parties for that, as I’m convinced that both share the blame for it.
Well, BrightNShiny, my thinking is that since this is a long standing problem through a variety of administration combinations, there would seem to be more to it than GOP vs Dems. To be honest, “Honor our Vets” seems more like a traditional Republican talking point.
I’m not sure what exactly has been swept under the rug yet. We have RTFirefly’s skepticism of the DoD’s position. I would tend to be skeptical as well, but the VA isn’t necessarily more impartial here.
I don’t much recall Clinton’s efforts on VA reform. A quick search shows that the Republicans trumped him in his last budget, though. heh.
Of course, the current administration’s consistently rosy Iraq predictions had a lot to do with the system being overwhelmed by war. If we’d been in and out in six months as expected, clunky old Walter Reed wouldn’t have had time to break down to the extent it has. At some point in the last four years those in charge should have come to the realization that a long war requires that some attention be given to home infrastructure.
They did give it attention, they privatized it. That’s like, the ultimate fix.
Honestly, I have no idea why Clinton didn’t tackle the DOD. But the cleanup at the VA is important, and he should get credit for it.
Perhaps. But the current batch of problems are probably exacerbated by our current wars. That is, we could have had a poorly functioning system that’s been pushed to break point.
Yes, but you also implied that people who show concern now are doing so solely because this war is unpopular. That’s an unfair accusation and isn’t going to help anyone solve this issue.
I don’t think it’s GOP vs. Dems. It’s this administration. This administration has taken a much more active role in the day-to-day management of the military than any administration has done in a while. It has arrogated power to itself to act unilaterally, and it has been completely resistant to Congressional oversight.
If Bush wants to run the show however he wants to, I got no problem laying the blame at his feet. He’s had plently of time to equip the military to deal with our current wars. Let him use his unitary authority to do so.
See, I’d like to help, but they might end up using my money to promote shit such as anti-flag burning amendments, or “For God and Country” bumperstickers. They might also use it to show their support for the war in Iraq. Hell, they might spend the money trying to convince my employer that I should take a “loyalty oath”, or they might even use it to support the next Mussolini.
Up until a couple of years ago, even atheists weren’t allowed in the VFW, but as far as I know they are much less politically inclined than the AL. Still a bit too political for my tastes.
I have to say, I’m certainly glad that these groups are interested in protecting the constitution.
As for anti-war folks being shallow in their support of troops, they’ve been supporting them since the war started, and haven’t wavered in their support of them. Many of the former yellow magnet displaying soccer moms with big “W” bumper stickers, on the other hand, seem to have lost those magnets (some are scraping off the bumper stickers as well).
Okay. If you don’t want to give money to the Legion or VFW, that’s certainly fair.
As a public service, I can identify other charities not tied up with so much political baggage that also would love donations from you.
Operation Homefront assists military families with everything from moving, furniture, vehicle repair, emergency aid and improved means to stay connected with loved ones who are deployed.
Fisher House provides quarters nearby military hospitals so that a wounded servicemember can have his family close by while he recovers.
Can I assume that, since you said you’d like to help, that a donation will be on the way soon, DMC?
While I’m not going to be cajoled into giving, I haven’t even begun my 2007 distributions yet, and both of those actually look interesting after a small bit of research. I have small questions about Fisher House’s expenses, but those will get answered with more research. They’ve been thrown into the pot of possibilities for this year.
According to Charity Navigator, Fisher House spends only 2% of its budget on fundraising expenses and 2.4% on administrative expenses. All the rest goes right to programs.
This earned it a 4 star rating (out of 4), better than the Ronald McDonald houses, which perform a similar purpose and would face the same kinds of costs.
They sound good to me, and will get some of my money. I have lots left over from not buying yellow car magnets.
Yeah, I know - Clinton was supposed to fix everything, despite having a hostile Congress for 3/4 of his Presidency. So if he improved some things, but left others pretty much as they were, it’s his bad. Of course.
If you’ve got a broken-down old car that you use to drive to the store and back every once in awhile, fixing it isn’t a high priority. But if your brother decides take it on a cross-country trip without fixing it, and it breaks down on the way, the failure to fix it is just as much your fault as his?
I’m assuming you’re using ‘fix’ in a facetious manner. If so, that would be an accurate description.
No. It is a good bit more complicated than that, as always.
While in theory civilians control the military, this control only goes to matters of funding, establishment of broad matters of policy, and actually ordering the military into battle. In nearly all other respects, Republicans and Democrats alike are happy to let the military run itself - just hand them the money and let them get the job done.
Usually this is a good choice. After all, who knows better what a ship needs than its captain and crew, for instance. Give them a budget, offship support systems, and training and remarkable things will get done.
But we all know of matters where this does not work, and it is obvious that military healthcare is a major problem. The DoD has been trying various fixes to this. CHAMPUS/TRICARE was a major effort over the years to move a good portion of military care (that of retirees and dependents) over to civilian doctors and have the government pick up the tab through a HMO-style payment scheme. While better now than it has been, it has seen some major problems over the years.
Servicemembers themselves, though, are still cared for by military doctors in military clinics and hospitals. And the record here is very mixed, and reflects the priorities of the services.
Soldiers are surviving wounds in Iraq and Afghanistan that they would have died from in Vietnam or even Gulf War I. This reflects many factors - better training in immediate care that every soldier, not just corpsmen, receive, improved transportation, better body armor (despite the controversy, body armor is better now than in any previous conflict), better immediate care in field hospitals and faster evacuation to trauma centers out of the battle zone. DoD hospitals are also the leaders now in prosthetic technology. Some soldiers and Marines are not only returning to duty with artificial legs, they are deploying to the Mideast again with them. At least one Marine requalified as a paratrooper after getting his new leg.
Where the breakdown happens is in day to day operation of some military hospitals for non-emergency cases, in tracking of a servicemember’s medical record between his various duty stations, and in long term rehabilitation for soldiers who are being retained in the military for whatever reason. The physical plants of many of these hospitals are in long term decline, as shown in the Washington Post piece, and reflect years of deferred maintenance in an era of lower budgets.
So there it is, the good and bad of military medicine. If you think Republicans or Democrats are at fault here, you’re kidding yourself. Mostly it was the military’s doing. But it can hardly be expected to unscrew this mess without guidance from the civilian sector.
Now is the time for some smart people to set some policy and allocate some money.
Should I repeat my analogy?
No, the time was (at the latest) in early to mid-2004 when it was clear that, even with Saddam captured and his sons dead, Iraq’s security situation was still going to be a massive problem, and our presence there had no end in sight.
Now would be better than later, but you’re deluding yourself if The Party In Charge of the Whole Damn Government the Past Few Years didn’t have a special obligation to deal with this.
GOP Congressmen knew about the problems at Walter Reed years ago. One was the chair of a committee that had the power to hold hearings, subpoena witnesses, and so forth about the issue. He did jack shit.
The party in charge of the whole damn government, huh?
I recall a time when that was true of the Democrats, and they tried to lean on the military bureaucracy about something they wanted, and the only thing they were able to accomplish was a compromise that nobody seems to like.
The party in charge of the whole damn government is actually the permanent bureaucracy, and in the military’s case that includes a ton of career officers. That’s is true in the medical corps as well, I can assure you.
Again, I’m not excusing anybody or anything by this. I think the whole thing stinks. But it has been stinking for far longer than you’ve been staring at the situation, believe me.
BTW, I don’t think planning to close down the entire facility counts as doing nothing, do you?
Yeah, but we know that Clinton tried to accomplish that goal against strong popular opposition, and we know how he was stymied.
OK, so what did Bush & Co. try, where did the opposition come from, and how were his attempts to rectify the situation stymied?
Oh, that’s right, he didn’t try anything.
Would he have had political support if he’d exposed the problems and tried to fix them? You bet.
Would some of the military bureaucracy still have dragged their heels? Yep.
Would there have been ways to counter that? You bet. Sunlight’s a great disinfectant.
How would it have turned out? We don’t know - they didn’t try. But it certainly had decent odds of success.
You’ve said that before.
And as I’ve said before, the stink has mattered a lot more in the past four years than in the previous Og only knows how many years.
See my analogy from a couple of posts back. Or does it have you stymied?
You’d have to clarify how the plan to close Walter Reed in 2011 actually addresses the problems with it now.
I mean, other than aggravating them by undercutting any rationale for all but the most short-term fixes.