"Every disabled service member should receive the same benefits as a five-star general at 30 years, regardless of his or her rank or tenure."
To which I say:
How about "regardless of whether they were in My Lai," etc.? Te Nuremberg Principles said soldiers had not a right, but a duty, to actively resist illegal wars. These guys oughta get "every penny" they earn for that, huh? Now again I'm thinking of that Joy Division song "They walked in line, they walked in line," etc. Personally, I support the troops that go AWOL, resist deployment, flee, etc., unjust wars.
Like John Thornton said, civilian and military disabilities ought to be assessed and rewarded the same way. It'd be nice if we at least tried to *pretend* we lived in a democratic republic sometimes, where the army were the servants -- who, you know, "sacrifice" for others -- of the civilians, who should be the ones put heroically on the pedestals that now seem reserved for folks in uniform.
In my GOVT class, a 19 year old woman in the Nat'l Guard mentioned that she gets treated better in stores when in uniform, than when not. Eve she seemed amazed by this! Sociological fieldwork, and she doesn't even know it, showing a nasty side of American culture.
McCain, by the way, can go fuck himself. On a personal, id-like level, I don't think the man deserves a goddamn thing, let alone 8 houses, the millions he gets wife or not, his posh lifestyle and opportunities to exercise power, socialized medicine from his birth (which was in Panama) -- let alone the icing on the cake which is 54K per year in untaxable "disability" / "retirement" checks, when he in a "common sense" way seems to be neither disabled (unless my definition of that word is anomalous to how it's used in dictionaries) or retired. Mr. pro-waterboarding-if-it-gets-me-votes earning money for being "disabled" while espousing some tough love for others -- fuck *that*.
The way the defense officials spoke of McCain's payments in the LA Times, they made it seem as if McCain was getting an honorarium for getting his arms broken, and any red-blooded patriot would uncontroversially support that. Like I said, the USAF person I know gets way less than 54K per year, but is apparently at the same level of "ability" as McCain, though the person I know needs an oxygen machine and on a good day can do something in his front yard out of the house.
-B.