Bush to Marines: "Semper F.U. "

Why are Republicans making them beg for scraps?


Pamela Hess has this from UPI. (Emphasis added)

I like Pam. She’s usually about a week or two ahead the rest of the media Universe when it comes to this kind of story: something volatile and vital, yet as nuts-and-bolts and deeply “inside” as Shakespeare talking about the backstabbery of royal court politics.

Marine budget short `08
By Pamela Hess
Oct 27, 2006, 19:00 GMT

WASHINGTON, DC, United States (UPI) -- The U.S. Marine Corps is pleading for an additional $4 billion in its fiscal year 2008 budget but has been rebuffed so far, a Marine Corps official said Thursday.

'We`ll comply with our fiscal guidance, but don`t ask me to tell you that $19 billion is good enough,' a Marine Corps official told United Press International.

While the U.S. Army has been unusually vocal and specific in discussing its 2008 budget crisis -- it says it needs about $22 billion more than the $114 billion it was originally slated to get next year -- the Marine Corps has not until now made its needs known publicly.

The Marine Corps -- at 181,000 people, by far the smallest branch of the military, and one that prides itself on doing things on a shoestring -- is preparing to make its arguments public and on the record in the next few weeks, he said.

It has become a matter of conscience.

Marine casualty reports come into the official`s office daily from Iraq -- three Thursday morning alone. They are a constant reminder of what 18 and 19-year-old kids are willing to do for the United States.

'I am increasingly uncomfortable that they are doing a lot more for the country than we are for doing for them,' he said. 'We will not be doing right by them if we don`t make powerful arguments.'

'That`s the right argument, telling the truth.'

The Marine Corps is slated to receive a fiscal year 2008 baseline budget of $18.6 billion. But according to the official, the Corps needs $2 billion more in its baseline budget and another $2 billion in the Navy budget for things the Navy provides to the Corps -- primarily aircraft like helicopters and the V-22 Osprey, but also medical personnel, health care and other accounts.

'Right now, the Navy and Marine Corps are making scary, terrible tradeoffs,' the official said. 'The war is having a corrosive effect on the Marine Corps. If we were at peace, this (budget) would probably be OK,' he said.

Earlier this year, the Marine Corps made its case for a budget 20 percent larger to the Office of the Secretary of Defense, which it believed would make the president understand the Marine Corps` mounting needs.

It was not a successful tactic.

'It`s inside the building politics,' the official explained. 'We thought we`d be respected for staying within our lane. It turns out that was not the right thing to do.'

…
'What`s the benefit of being quiet?' the official asked. 'The Army is going to be short about two-thirds of what they need. We`re going to be short by a lot more than that.'

Congress has provided the military more than $300 billion in war supplementals since 2001, but even those do not cover the bills. They come too late in the year and they are restricted in how they can be used. By law, they can only go for war 'consumables' -- bullets and bombs and the cost of paying soldiers combat bonuses.

But wars have hidden costs that supplementals don`t touch: additional health care, family benefits, barracks and training for the thousands of extra troops on the payrolls, among other things. Baseline budgets are tapped to cover those costs and money is drained from buying replacement and upgraded helicopters, tanks, vehicles and guns to plug the gaps.

'We are in the middle of a long war. Quite frankly, that`s fundamentally wrong,' the official said. 'We have to ask ourselves what we are willing to risk, whether we are willing to be as vocal as we need to be, to make people uncomfortable.

The shorter wingnut argument for the catalog of sins and obscenities their Party has committed against the military -- from dumping kids into a combat zone with cardboard body armor and Purple Heart Mobiles, to veteran’s benefits cuts, to stop-lossing soldiers until they crack, to why the Barcalounger Bravehearts of the 101st Chairborne have rabidly and categorically refused by the millions to enlist in their Iraqi War for Everything That Is Good And Decent -- has always, always been the same:

“They volunteered.”

Spoken with something between a sneer and a smirk.

Because while “They volunteered” is what they say, in wingnut code it means “They were stupid enough to volunteer.”

The Right views the military in exactly the same way their great-granddaddies viewed their slaves and their daddies and granddaddies viewed their sharecroppers.

As property.

As chattel they could simultaneously brag on for their productive utility, and work to death without a second thought or pang of conscience.

Because it is the dream of every weak and cowardly man to have other, superior men under their heel. Men they can legally fuck over with impunity. As a balm their massive sense of inferiority, weak, little men have always felt a powerful need to be able to fuck around with the lives of their betters.

It’s why, when his poll numbers start their death spiral, George Allen will unhesitatingly go “Macaca”.

It’s why, when faced with losing in Tennessee to a black man, the GOP will instantly go Full Metal Mandingo.

It’s why this country has a Klan, a 700 Club, Conservative Hate Radio and a Big White Torch-lit Basement called the Republican Party where they can all convene and conspire.

It’s why – from scientists to teachers to soldiers to organized labor to genuine journalists – the Right has such virulent contempt for the people they depend on to protect them in one way or another.

Because they cannot help themselves; this is simply how bigots and fascists are wired.

Because they view “Semper Fidelis” as a smutty little joke played on people foolish enough to actually believe in it -- something akin to the sign reading “Arbeit Macht Frei” over the gates Auschwitz -- instead of a solemn compact that runs both ways.

As the military is called upon to stand between we civilians and harm, so we civilians are called upon not to use them as ass paper. As disposable human HandiWipes that whatever gorgon Jerry Falwell really worships put here for us to use up and toss out.

Not to use them as human footstools to prop up our decrepit egos.

They are our children, and when we send them off to kill and die in our name we are bound by honor to be fucking well positive that they go armed and armored to the teeth for a fight that is based on threats that are both incontrovertible and unavoidable.

The war in Afghanistan against the Taliban was such a cause…and the Neocons coldly and deliberately used it to bait-and-switch us into Iraq and their Glorious War for Oil and Empire.

They sent our children off, wrapped in Kleenex and IOUs, to die in Iraq for lies and the greater glory of George W. Bush’s Oedipal complex.

And now that those kids are spent -- now enough of them have died to fill a country town, and enough of them have been wounded to populate a small city –- the Party of God that sent them off to bleed in foreign deserts for no damned good reason wants to make them beg for relief.

Wants to abuse and humiliate them one last time. Make ‘em dance a little more before kicking them to the curb, rolling over, and going back to sleep.

And why?

Because they volunteered to defend their country at a time when criminals and cowards and liars run the place.

Because they served during the Age of Dubya.

An age when one can either be a Good American or a Good Republican, but one can no longer be both.