There was a guy on here, I intentionally dis-remember his screen name, who flat out said that the military and veterans were no better than mercenaries and were paid what they deserved when they were in uniform and should get not one more red cent. Are you of the same opinion?
I think the military is the only part of our government I respect, but that doesn’t change the financial reality I described. Is it fair? Obviously not. But this is the mess, blown up over decades, by the irresponsible politicians we collectively voted for.
G*d save America, because it doesn’t look like Americans will.
When [Milton] Friedman was a member of the Presidential Commission appointed by President Nixon in 1969 to study how the draft might be eliminated, General William Westmoreland, who had been the commander of the troops in Vietnam and was Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army at the time, told the commission that he did not want to command an army of mercenaries. Friedman stopped him and asked, “General, would you rather command an army of slaves?” General Westmoreland retorted, “I don’t like to hear our draftee soldiers referred to as slaves.” Friedman shot back, “I don’t like to hear our patriotic volunteers referred to as mercenaries. If they are mercenaries, then I, sir, am a mercenary professor, and you, sir, are a mercenary general; we are served by mercenary physicians, we use a mercenary lawyer, and we get our meat from a mercenary butcher.” That was the last the Commission heard from the general about mercenaries.
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