This was another hard-hitting column, Campion. (VA SCANDAL: OUR IMPRINT, OUR LEGACY, OUR SIN – Issue: 5/29/14)
Where do you get the insight or the guts?
This is a wake-up call to those who waste our time with crap like Benghazi and the IRS or the NSA when our veterans are being murdered by us; that’s right, the American people, who ultimately represent themselves and thus must take responsibility when something like this continues to happen right under our noses.
I am ashamed to be an American. I am ashamed to ever having said I support the troops. We do not support the troops. We only support the actions of this government again and again for decades to send our young into harm’s way for Enron and GE and Exxon and the macho call of useless politicians who NEVER go to war, but have no problem sending the few who are called.
You are so right. This is not a problem made of the VA, but it is the problem with a nation that now for almost 15 years has been embroiled in war and it affects us in no way. Our taxes don’t go up, our families do not have to sacrifice like so many who have military kids in theirs. Where is our sacrifice? Why does no one ever answer that? Why do only a few give their life and limb for us? We whistle along as the stock market rises and the economy slowly comes back and we bicker about who is American and who is a socialist and who loves which country. It is a childish game to ignore the truth; we are broken and have been broken and we are now killing our veterans, while they rightly expect to be taken care of.
Is there a more horrible sin than that?
We are leaving those poor souls who gave their lives to protect and keep us free to die. Die! In our care.
For shame.
And thank you for saying it.
—Dorothy Levine
Sir,
It has been an absolute pleasure to read your work in the Aquarian each week. You are the most honest columnist of our times. I almost feel as though you should have a larger following (sorry—I am assuming that since you have not been co-opted by the cable news rabble to add to the dumbing down of the U.S. that you are not more famous).
This was a sobering account of the sins of our nation. This VA scandal is so hard to stomach. It is an embarrassment that I cannot imagine we will ever be able to accept. My heart goes out to the victims of this crime, their families, and those who have faith in this nation to not only go to war but remember the debt that those have paid for these decisions.
I hope too that when people are screaming for us to get involved in every possible violent act across the globe that we first must clean up and take stock of what we have done with the last wars.
—DR780909
I am so sad that no matter whom we elect from what party and all the shouting and finger-pointing, that we still have a military industrial complex that chews up and spits out so many soldiers with little regard to what would become of them once the battles are over. The battles are not over for them.
Bush should be made to answer for this. Also Cheney, Obama, Clinton and every member of Congress since 2001. And especially the Pentagon.
What have we become?
—TRR
This VA scandal is a perfect example of how the red tape of our federal system, this huge, unchecked conglomerate of bloated bureaucracy can screw something up so important. This is the fear that most of us have about a national health care system. What will become of us now? That is a question that needs to be asked and only time will answer it.
—Garbage-In/Garbage-Out
Under NO circumstances should this country go back into Iraq!!! (TIME WARP – Issue: 6/18/14) Who the hell thinks this is a good idea?? Dick Cheney? DICK CHENEY??? How dare this broken-down, pathetic war-monger, whose ENRON war set this nation’s foreign policy into the Middle Age! John McCain? The man who doesn’t see a conflict he doesn’t want us in the middle of? Fox News? Because they were so right about that disaster in the first place? Who thinks this is a good idea besides these imbeciles?
Thank God Obama is president!
—GI Jane
While the distaste of all things Iraq, past and present, is on our collective palates, let’s step back a sec and realize that the same diseased thinking that went into that horrendous blood folly is also at play in every other sector of our more-tyrannical-by-the-day Federal Government, whether it be health care, amnesty, regulation of almost everything except my rashy asshole, and that means EVERYONE who’s been in the Big Chair on down, Democrats and Republicans. What a bunch of fucking cretinous barnacles we’ve allowed encrust our country. If we’re stupid enough to elect another Clinton, Bush, or (God forbid Obama) then we deserve the Orwellian future we’re going to get.
—Ken Eustace
Nice, and war is always about tiny penis reasoning.
—Bo Blaze
IRAQ? NO!
—B. Kissel
Can you imagine if we had given weapons to the supposed Syrian rebels? Right now this ISIS group is using U.S. weapons and tanks to wreak havoc in Iraq. How much damage are we suppose to unleash on this mess? You are correct. Enough is enough. I cannot believe we are even discussing this.
—henrygo-pa-pa
Do yourself no favors and “like” this idiot at www.facebook.com/jc.author
James Campion is the Managing Editor of the Reality Check News & Information Desk and the author of “Deep Tank Jersey”, “Fear No Art”, “Trailing Jesus”, “Midnight for Cinderella” and “Y”.
