Posted on 12/13/2013 5:39:14 PM PST by ReaganCowboy
In 24 years of active military service, I never lived any closer than 300 miles to my family. Sometimes it was eight time zones away.
My wife and I moved five times in first ten years. All five children were born at different duty stations; the first one was born overseas. It was two months before the grandparents saw him.
I’ve been deployed three times to hostile fire zones. I’ve been shot at, had grenades throw at me, had a pistol put to my head, seen a SCUD missile blow up overhead and it’s wreckage land a quarter-mile away, and been in two riots, one of which required getting helicopter gunships cover my escape while being responsible for the lives of eight war correspondents. In the other riot I appeared on live TV to urge calm.
I ran countless miles to stay in shape. I took physical fitness tests and was weighed every six months and for every school I attended. I’ve taken urine tests to see if I was on illegal drugs. I’ve had my background investigated every five years, and I’m been polygraphed. I wore a helmet and body armor as my daily uniform over 1,000 times. Most days I wore boots, not shoes. I have served in the rain, the freezing rain, the sleet, the snow, the ice – and in the sun when it was 120 degrees in the shade and when exposed metal reaches 140 degrees. Once in Africa I went 45 days without a shower. I’ve served in hurricane winds too. And I worked in the Pentagon the day the plane hit and in the days afterward while the fire still burned.
Overseas I picked up a parasitic disease that was previously unknown to American medical doctors, for which I was treated thirty days with an experimental chemical compound the main component of which was formerly used to clean barnacles off ship hulls and for which the Environmental Protection Agency outlawed as too toxin for the ecosystem, while living two months on an HIV+ ward…where I was cross-contaminated with Hepatitis B from an AIDS patient via my nurse. I now have no cartilage in my knees; I have a torn rotator cuff on my dominant arm; I have a herniated disc in my lower back and I have obstructive sleep apnea from over-developed neck muscles built up to support a four pound helmet, nine pound flak vest and a forty pound rucksack, while carrying an eight pound rifle.
I have routinely pulled shifts of 24-48 hours, while charged with leading over one hundred other men doing the same dangerous duty as I. Due to demands of my profession I missed the stock market run-up of the 80’s and the housing market run-up of the ninety’s.
For all of this I receive a pension less than of half my highest total compensation package, based on a salary of which at one point in my career was 23% below comparable civilian pay. My retiree health care plan, as declared by act of Congress, only minimally meets the standards of the new mandatory federal health care system, and is fully only available to me in an ever decreasing number of military communities in which I am the lowest of patient priorities.
Based on Department of Defense retirement and mortality statistics I will die 11 years earlier than a normal American man of my age. It would take seventeen and one-half years of my combined retainer pay – yes, I can be called back to duty in case of full mobilization – AND my 80% Veterans Administration disability compensation pay to equal the eleven years of my current post-retirement civilian salary that my earlier death will cause my estate to miss out on.
And none of this career was automatic. I served in an up-or-out Army, with progressively more restrictive promotion selection rates of 95%, 85%, 50% and 19%. If you missed a promotion gate you were out of the active service, with a severance pay but no 401(k) to carry over to your next job. And yes, veterans are discriminated against in the job market. In fact I was non-selected for active promotion at one point in my career, due to the downsizing of the military after end of the Cold War, the Gulf War and implementation our new ‘peace dividend.’ I did get a severance package. I then spent the last half of my uniformed career on active duty in the reserve components and am subsequently one of less than five thousand Soldiers down-sized after the first Gulf War to successfully string together a long enough stretch of active and reserve duty to earn a military retirement before the age of 60 – when reservists are eligible to receive their significantly less ‘retainer pay.’ In order to draw active retirement pay I had to pay back 100% of that prior severance package, even though 20% of the original amount was taken off the top in the form of federal withholding tax. Isn’t that double-taxation? No one’s inflated my retirement package. In fact, the only efforts to adjust my retirement have been to change the basis of calculating my retirement to lesser formula. Or better yet, a move to quadruple the premium I now pay for retirement health care – a benefit that was promised 24 years ago as ‘free for life.’ Did my recruiter lie to me? Or did Congress?
My wife, who followed me around the world when she could and raised five kids by herself when she couldn’t, who gave up a career of her own to be my support system, will get a whopping twenty-seven thousand dollars a year survivor benefit pension should I die before she does, out of which she’ll still have to pay premiums for retiree health and dental care. And she’ll lose that pension if she finds love again and remarries. At least I am eligible to be buried a Veterans Administration cemetery, or if there’s still room by then, in Arlington National Cemetery. Of course it’s a six-week backlog to be buried at Arlington… even in death for the military, it’s ‘hurry-up-and-wait.’
Over compensated? I was part of the all volunteer American military that re-vitalized itself after the Vietnam War, that trained superbly hard for war with the Soviets, that absolutely crushed Iraq in the first Gulf War and that re-trained itself to simultaneously fight the longest counter-insurgency campaigns and world-wide war against terrorists in our history. Like a very old Legionnaire, I am now home from my empire’s wars and I am enjoying what my government chose to compensate me with. I am a grateful citizen.
My government can change present and future military compensation with simple legislative and executive ease, and even the past promises of retiree compensation. If it does I will not grumble, but instead whisper ‘good luck’ in raising a loyal, well trained Roman legion in the generation to come. We may well return to our former status as a true Greek militia nation, as was our Revolutionary genesis, and maybe we should. Maybe that’s all we can afford. Just recall that as a militia nation we only successfully fought wars on our own front, and never led the world.
Expeditionary armies are not fiscally expedient. Decide who your enemies are, and either make peace or prepare for war. Conscription is a politically expensive alternative to the all volunteer force in the short term but fiscally cheaper in the very long term (because draftees don’t usually hang around long enough to retire.) Damn those disabled veterans – they are breaking the Treasury! And dogs and retired Soldiers – keep off the grass and get off the dole!
We need 50,000 Gurkas.
What we will be getting is 100K alternate lifestyle individuals with same sex spousal benefits.
Who would want Bammy or H! as their commander?
It would only take two or three to clean out the filth in the White House.
- Joseph Stalin
If the Draft comes back and I’m still alive, I’ll do what I can to help the draft dodgers avoid service to the New World Order.
I hang my head in shame,,
the greatest machine for peace this planet Will Ever See;
The American Soldier.
Thank You.
Great rant and I can relate to much of what you wrote.
We have homosexuals in all our barracks, sodomites dancing in the streets in front of the Pentagon, we have an anti-American muslim coward in our White House, we have a decidedly anti-military regime running around in our White House, we have military defunding going on, we have generals being let go who refuse to murder American citizens, etc.
What else could make our military totally unappetizing?
Obama’s going to turn the military into another massive benefits program for his loyal commie followers.
Liberal empowered women getting themselves and men that have to compensate for them killed in close combat causing even more weakness and de-moralization in the military.
Thanks for your service.
What do you mean? They have ‘em all lined up. Gays, feminists and Illegal Immigrants.
So more like good luck to those who are being protected by the creep corp.
Thank you.
Hmm, things like this are starting to make me think I was fortunate to be turned down from military service.
And worse, for me, is the pleasure I used to get in recommending military service to young men and women. No more!
“We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.” Get ready for the Tonton Macoute.
What else could make our military totally unappetizing?
______________
Not being able to openly acknowledge that Jesus is the answer for all of our battles. Without Him we are nothing and so is the military!
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