Uppity Wisconsin

Hey Sussex, Wisconsin native Thomas Tradewell, Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) National Commander, where are you?

Because nothing is sacred to the Republican Party, certainly not veterans.

Chris Adams at McClatchy Newspapers reports, "While Republicans are calling a Department of Veterans Affairs (DVA) health planning booklet a 'death book' that encourages veterans to kill themselves or forgo care, ethicists and legal and medical experts say it's a reasonable attempt to help America's veterans plan for the end of their lives."
 
Make no mistake, the GOP will tell any lie and dishonor America's 26-million veterans for a chance to stir up its benighted base. Now, they are claiming that the DVA is encouraging veterans to kill themselves.

Does the VFW approve of these lies?

America has 26-million veterans comprising a tremendously powerful and effective lobby for veterans' interest after service. Wrong.

Veteran advocates who do the thankless work assisting veterans navigating through an often uncaring [and under the administration of George W. Bush hostile] bureaucracy in the U.S. Dept of Veterans Affairs (DVA) see themselves as sleeping with the enemy as service organization such as the American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) are perceived as posing a barrier to reform.

Recently a resident of Sussex, Wisconsin, Thomas Tradewell, was elected VFW National Commander.

 
Mr.

Gordon Duff is hostile to war and committed to advocacy for America’s 23-million veterans.

The truth of the matter is that Duff, a Scottish-American Maine combat veteran of the obscene lie known as the Vietnam War, is scarred for life and he keeps up the fight for fellow veterans’ wellbeing.

Duff has spoken up on numerous occasions for jailed Wisconsin veteran Keith Roberts, for example.

Now, as Duff notes a contemporary American military that is ever more brown, black and female, he points to an increasingly vocal number of veterans who are "white, male and aggressively 'Aryan' in orientation,"

As a whole Duff sees veterans under-performing at best as a potential lobby against an imperial American foreign policy sustained by systemic lying. And out-and-out racism is just the worst of it.

Write Duff in Veterans Today, The Decline of the American Veteran:

As it is now, if 'leaders,' anyone who can wave a flag and lie, tell the sheep to follow, no matter where or why, we ask nothing.

How President Obama reacts to three catastrophes will define his presidency.

And none is the health care crisis, as critical as that is, and as annoying as are the Republican lies about public health care.

The catastrophes are Afghanistan, Goldman Sachs, and Veterans Affairs, none of which show a clear path to an acceptable humanitarian and political resolution.

Afghanistan

“Fool! You fell victim to one of the classic blunders. The most famous is 'Never get involved in a land war in Asia!’” said Vizzini in The Princess Bride, a brilliant film my girlfriend talked me into watching.

Or as Gregory Feifer puts it in The Great Gamble, The Soviet War in Afghanistan (HarperCollins, 2009), “The Soviet war in Afghanistan again confirmed that no power ever successfully conquered that land … [From] Cyrus the Great [to] Alexander the Great … [to] the British … foreign forces have often moved into Afghanistan with relative ease, they’ve never been able to maintain control.”

Feifer and Vizzini might have added that the difficulties of the invaders paled in comparison to the devastation wreaked upon the invaders’ Afghan victims who after all were slaughtered and maimed on a level surpassing the American imagination.

Our Vietnam War Marine veteran friend has another typically fascinating piece out at Veterans Today, Background to Tyranny: Bush Family Terror Ties Decades-Old.

The roots of American authoritarianism are long and deep. From Gordon Duff:

Does the following sound crazy? It's not crazy. Just history that is impolitic to report.

In 1934, the Bush family helped organize a military attack on Washington in order to install a Nazi government. Sound outlandish? It is American history. It is call 'the Business Plot (BBC).'

Conservative 'think tanks' still spend millions to edit this from our history books. Sites are taken off the internet and Wikipedia is still erased, even decades later.

Would two rigged elections, a mysterious 9/11 attack, torture and totalitarian rule be surprising if Americans were allowed to know their own history?

Update: Here's a jobs program, processing veterans' claims that are pouring in (NYT). Would give veterans the respect they deserve, but I suppose the bureaucrats would rather set veteran against veteran like what the Inspector General is trying to pull off in the Robert Anthon affair out of Fort Atkinson. Just another thought, how about no war?

Here's an appalling, emerging Dept of Veterans Affairs (DVA) scandal in an agency that one would think ought to operate with the force and discipline of a Vince Lombardi-coached offensive line.

But the flag-waving and faux patriotism that is such a pervasive aspect of our culture does not translate into the DVA helping our 26 million veterans as they deserve.

See the following pieces posted over the weekend about a scandal in our neighbor to the northwest:

- VA 'Quack' Scandal in Montana May Be Worst Yet

- Massive Patient Abuse Fraud,Courageous Vets Stand Against Hospital Cover-up

Funny how the most effective and most committed veteran advocates have nothing but profane language for those veterans who wrap themselves in the flag and scream Republican and God Bless America.

Take Gordon Duff, a Vietnam War Marine combat veteran and regular contributor to Veterans Today.

What Duff [that's the crazy SOB in photo] lacks in subtlety, he makes up in commitment and candor. From Duff's latest:

Gordon Duff at Veterans Today has a piece on the GOP hostility to veterans.

Duff is a Marine combat veteran and a writer on political and social issues who apparently has had enough.

Wisconsin's jailed veteran, Keith Roberts, get a prominent mention.

Writes Duff:

‘Conservative’ means ‘saving money’ and ‘keeping soldiers as slaves onto death.’ Whether we are talking John McCain or Burr or Graham or two dozen others, these patriotic heroes have done nothing over the years but receive continual support from our favorite veterans groups for gutting military and veterans benefits.

With a series of ‘think tanks’ selling pseudo science, most of them got their feet wet with decades of ‘smoking and lung cancer denial,’ or similar idiocy, the American Enterprise Institute stands out as the lead in the war against American heroes.

Even more maniacal and radical than the Heritiage Foundation, private ‘rubber stamp’ for the schemes of Amway/Blackwater, Coors extremism and Richard Mellon Scaife, private funder for the failed Clinton impeachment, the AEI focuses on destroying veterans.

Their primary tool is a Doctor Sally Satel.