For over forty years now whenever I hear the loud demands, especially by the elected representatives of the people, for tax cuts my first thought has always been the long underfunded Veterans Administration and related to our wars of choice, second is the ever growing, with no objection, defense budgets year to year!
July 5, 2011 - A very small number of Americans are now serving in the military — less than 1 percent. Some are looking for direction; others are inspired by a sense of patriotism or by a family member who served in an earlier war. In the series Who Serves, NPR looks at the troops who have made a decision few others have — to fight in America's wars.
Just after dawn one day last month, Sgt. Jon Moulder led his patrol of Marines out of Combat Outpost Reilly — basically a collection of tents and sandbags and razor wire — and headed down a dusty road in Afghanistan's Helmand province.
Moulder is a short, compact Marine from Nashville, Tenn. He's on his fourth combat tour, split evenly between Iraq and Afghanistan.
That's meant a lot of time away from home.
"Yeah, it's this whole family thing, deploying and keep leaving," Moulder says. "I have my personal views and opinions on things."
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Moulder's had his share of near misses. And for him, and many of the Marines, the question is whether it's all worth it.
Last month in Washington, the debate was about how many troops to bring home.
When asked whether he felt that people back home care about the war, Moulder says, "I think we're starting to fall to the wayside."
"This has been going on for so long," he adds. "Hell, you know, it's America's longest conflict running to date. ... We're kind of like the bastard children of our generation. Starting to become unwanted," Moulder says.
He's feeling forgotten. And that's after having survived four roadside bomb explosions. He's suffered a concussion — he's having trouble sleeping and he's seeing a counselor about post-traumatic stress. {read more}
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There's even less 'Sacrifice' by the country, especially by the wealthy reaping the booty of the war profits, and has been the many years of these conflicts then was the decades coming out of Korea and Vietnam!
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