Dancing Elder and Inquisitor-at-Large Ant Crabby responds to Brother Dave:
Why is this rolling over of elderly bonds somehow indicative of paying them off, just because technically they matured? The costs of Viet Nam go on and on, and will continue as real expenditures of tax dollars even after the last Viet Nam vet has absorbed countless but inadequate medical dollars and passed on, in the form of burial costs, upkeep costs on the Federal cemeteries, re-interment of spouses in a beggar's stack of coffins* in the already full guaranteed military cemeteries, U.S. payments of damages in future world courts for sempiternal damage done to Vietnamese fields and waters, nth generation social costs of some post "war" Vietnamese immigrants and children of U.S. vets, abating of various remaining weapons built in the Sixties and Seventies, and the lands of their construction and storage, etc. ad infinitum.
Just getting warmed up here folks, and i haven't even mentioned what may be the greatest uncalculated cost, the income lost to those men mangled, maimed, killed, mentally destroyed -- lets talk principal and interest over time, accrued value of savings of all kinds -- nor the absence of some long-lasting works of art and invention that would have come out of a few of those whose mere names decorate Lin's Wall. Nor have we even discussed huge costs entailing to the war in Viet Nam itself, and to the many allies who fought there. Nor have we considered the U.S. failure in the Viet Nam conflict as rationale for the absurd three trillion dollar military build up of the Reagan years, much of it already obsolete, that our great grandchildren will still be paying for at their retirements.
There is no limit to the costs of war, especially no time limits, and all war accounting is done by firms the like of Arthur Anderson, actual expenditures downplayed in mirror image to their usual practice.
Despite all of the above, i very much appreciate your point, Dave. Thanks.
*The reference to the stack of coffins is that the U.S. promised "side by side" plots to veterans for their wives. All vets are owed free burial at any time they decease. But, having served as pallbearer for a vet's coffin to the military field, Fort Logan, about 12 years ago, i discovered from the old vets a change in policy, a denial of the promise. Due to the large number of WWII vets deceasing, and the lack of investment in new plots [ which are quite expensive ] to hold them, remains of pre-deceased vets or their family are now dug up and moved, at will of cemetery managers with limited choices to the living survivors, mostly for the purpose of stacking them in a vertical pile with recently deceased, to save space. I am not personally disturbed by this, but those old men, facing their maker, were quite disturbed by the breaking of faith. What amazes me is that no one seems to keep count of all the broken promises to vets, nor warns volunteer enlistees that they are buying into a pack of lies.
9:31:59 AM 
|
|
