Repaying the Sacrifice

I know I usually spend my time writing about Army life, and waxing philosophical on what life is like from my perspective. Tonight, I'm shaking things up quite a bit, and I'm going to end up going political. Leave your feelings at the door, I might just tromp all over them.

I get emails from various places; some from parenting websites, with tricks and tips for life with a small child, some from my favorite places to shop with coupons and sales to entice me to spend more money, typically on my child (I would like to note, it's not that hard to get me into Carter's or Babies'R'Us), some about bills that need to be paid, and some that I have no idea how or why I'm getting them.

And this, a few days ago, I got one from a military website. I opened it, expecting the typical stuff, how to shore up your family for a coming deployment, talk about points for promotions… and instead, I saw an article talking about military pensions, and the recent recommendation that they are too generous, and should be changed. Or rather, they should be done away with completely.

The Defense Business Board, which is pretty much a private board that makes recommendations, has recommended that the current pensions be tossed, and replaced with a 401(k) plan. As in, you put money in towards your own retirement.

Let me break this down… the board is compromised entirely of experts from big business. The same big businesses that nearly bankrupted this country, and put us in the middle of a recession that is threatening to break the middle and lower classes daily. To say I do not trust these esteemed leaders of business is a huge understatement. (I would be interested to hear what the Oracle of Ohio has to say about this though.) The same big businesses that are fighting tooth and nail against any sort of regulations, the same businesses that are spending untold amounts of money hiring lobbyists to meet with my elected officials, most of whom I don't trust anyways, to keep them from voting in any new regulations.

So this board, who I don't trust anymore than I can throw them, has come up with this plan to take away the military pensions. And then shifting the burden of planning for retirement back onto the soldier. Instead of getting a pension paid to them, each soldier would now have to contribute to their retirement on their own, and odds are, this won't be matched by the government.

So why exactly am I so hot about this?

The answer is simple. When does a soldier give enough? Is his sweat, tears, blood, his very life, not enough to have earned a pension paid by the government? Are the scars my husband carries, both physical and emotional, from having served two back to back deployments, not enough? When my husband leaves the Army, years from now, with knees blown out, hips that need to be replaced, when he carries more scars and more battle-wounds, is not that enough??

A good soldier does not join up for the glory, or even the honor. He meets with that recruiting officer, signs away his life, leaves his family behind, for love of country first. He is so driven to protect the flag, the anthem, all that those represent, that he will willingly lay down his life. We owe the men and women serving a retirement. We owe them much more than that, but a retirement, a life after service where they are taken care of, it is absolutely immoral to take away the retirement pensions from a soldier who is one of the few willing to stand up for his country and protect it.

I am not going to say that there are not places where the military should cut back, the Joint Strike Fighter Program, now nearing 20 years with no plane actually in service, has cost us somewhere in the neighborhood of $382 billion; defense contractors, who have become notorious for losing money, get billions in military money each year, many of them doing jobs that were once done, and some would argue done better by soldiers themselves (Balfour Beatty, I'm talking about you and your awful maintenance service here). Lockheed Martin got $31 billion in contracts in 2009, which is more than the entire budget for the Department of Agriculture. The list could go on and on, instead of spending money where it was needed armoring vehicles currently in use in two war zones, beefing up the programs that help returning soldiers readjust to life back home, working on the programs that help the families of soldiers, both deployed and at home; the military spends untold amounts of money on some of the most asinine projects known to man. (I'm still fuming over the amount spent on that stupid airplane, and I've seen that number for weeks now.)

Telling the military to cut it's spending, while in the middle of two wars, does not mean the military will stop asking for better weapons, smarter bombs, more accurate missiles, faster and better jets. It means the military will cut programs that effect the lives of it's soldiers, pensions, programs that offer help for soldiers, programs that offer help to the families.

My husband, and thousands of soldiers like him, have given enough to have earned that retirement. I have, within the time span of a year, given enough to rest assured that retirement is taken care of, that we will have something to fall back on, when his knees are shot from running, when jumping out of airplanes has taken it's toll on his back and hips. I have earned the programs that help me, specifically, the programs that offer me help and comfort during the worst days.

We have this list of recommendations from leaders in big business, who are probably more corrupt than I could even dream of being, who, I would be willing to bet, have never served in the military, or bought their way out of service, who have no idea what it is like to serve, to be asked to give again, and again, and again. And they are striking at the heart of the one promise we need to make good on, the promise of retirement given to a soldier, after he has given his time to his country. It is morally reprehensible to ask a soldier to give more, when he has given already, and it is a mark of how low we are sinking, that this would be touted as a good idea by our politicians.

My entire point in having spent close to an hour of my time fact-checking and reading, is simple… it's my way of keeping the light on. I have not forgotten the sacrifices a soldier, and his family, make. Nor will I ever.

And I have to say… I will remember this unpatriotic nonsense when I vote next time.

~Jennifer

All facts/numbers used in this blog I gathered from:
http://www.military.com/news/article/are-military-pensions-too-generous.html?ESRC=army-a.nl

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Strike_Fighter_program

http://www.warisbusiness.com/458/news/fun-with-charts-military-contractor-spending-outstrips-rest-of-us-govt/

I did not vet any of the above sources for bias one way or another, this is a blog, not a research paper, I didn't want to turn this into an evening's chore, and I wanted just numbers, which aren't typically biased.