Honor Them Now

Now that we've had a solid week of memorials for dead soldiers of past wars, could we please turn our attention to some folks we can actually do something about other than sing them songs of honor---the live soldiers of the current war?

Mike Keefe has this cartoon in the Denver Post: A ring of men in uniform with big guns pointed outward, are protecting a man at a podium in the center, identified as "Iraqi Interim Gov't." One soldier says to another: When I joined the National Guard, I thought the nation I'd be guarding was mine."

On June 2, the U.S. Army announced that soldiers bound for Iraq and Afghanistan as well as the ones already there, won't necessarily be getting out when their enlistments are up. They have to stay as long as their units are there. The New York Times reported this "could keep thousands of troops in the service for months longer than they expected over the next several years." But there is no limit set to the amount of time they would be "retained." The order applies to Army Reserve units as well as active duty soldiers.

This not only places the lives of these soldiers in increased peril while they are in Iraq and Afghanistan. It also places the lives of their families at home in peril, and their own ability to support their families decently if and when they return.

Even official Defense Department numbers (from the most recent report, issued in 1999) showed that 40% of lower ranking soldiers face "substantial financial difficulties" because of their low pay. That report indicates that some 25,000 families of soldiers are eligible for food stamps. The real numbers now are almost certainly much higher, especially for soldiers serving abroad. Front-line battle troops earn less than $16,000 a year. This is a Wal-Mart level wage---and many of those folks are on food stamps, too. A second lieutenant earns $26,000, which (according to Barbara Ehrenreich) is about what they'd make at home for re-soling shoes.

While doling out huge benefits in tax cuts to the rich, the Bush administration left some 200,000 armed forces personnel without a child tax credit, and has proposed cutting combat pay bonuses by $150 a month (this at a time when soldiers and their families are spending up to $1,000 out of their own pockets to pay for body armor and other protections the U.S. military doesn't provide them.) The Bushies propose to add costs to veterans' health care insurance which will drive an estimated 200,000 out of the system, and discourage another million from enrolling.

But not all the news is bad. Despite the poor or nonexistent medical care many wounded soldiers receive when they return in secret, hidden from even a not very inquiring press, the Bush administration proposes to double the death benefit for those soldiers in coffins that Americans are forbidden to photograph and see. The families get $6,000 now.