Joe Galloway on how we honor veterans:
Let’s all pay lip service to Support Our Troops. But if we want to
be honest, we should edit those yellow-ribbon bumper stickers to say
Support Our Troops — As Long As It Doesn’t Cost Anything.Let’s
acknowledge that this new generation of soldiers and Marines is
amazingly motivated and talented. They’re expected to be good killers,
good diplomats and ambassadors of American goodwill who operate under
impossibly complex rules of engagement in impossibly dangerous and
deadly environments.But if they come home wounded, their brains
rattled by the huge IEDs of the new way of war, and if they suffer the
horrors of PTSD nightmares and flashbacks, let’s dump them on the
streets with the least amount of help and benefits possible, as cheaply
as possible.For sure we don’t want to improve their chances,
better their future prospects, by offering them the same college
benefits we gave their grandfathers six decades ago. God help us if
they all get college degrees and figure out what we’ve done to them.