IT WASN’T ALWAYS LIKE THIS
SHAME ON THE BUSH REGIME
By Kyle and Abraham

Believe it or not there was a time when we did NOT treat war our veterans like toilet paper. Today we allow our veterans, wounded or otherwise, to go homeless and to wait weeks or even months before they are declared disabled. But it wasn’t always like this. After World War II we treated our Veterans like human beings, passing the GI Bill and treating them with respect and dignity as we provided them with educational and housing opportunities.

Educational opportunities were the most important aspect of the GI Bill. Approximately 7.8 million veterans attended colleges, trade schools, business schools and agricultural schools. GIs were guaranteed a year’s worth of education plus the time of their military service up to 48 months. They also received as much as $90 a month for food and housing. And it proved successful. Thousands of veterans used the GI Bill to attend school. By 1947 veterans composed approximately 49 percent of all college students. In 1952 and 1966 the GI Bill was expanded to include veterans from the Korean and Vietnam Wars, but was terminated in 1989 during the first Bush Administration. As if we should be surprised. The GI Bill was passed by a Democratic Congress and was signed into Law by Franklin Roosevelt in 1944, BEFORE the end of World War II. And we all know how indefatigable the Republicans are in their efforts to dismantle FDRs economic policies.

So how effective was it? The original GI Bill provided books, tuition and money for fees. And, more impressively, for every dollar invested seven dollars were generated. In addition the GI Bill also provided unemployment payments of $20 per week for a period of 52 weeks when a veteran couldn’t find a job. It provided loan guarantees for a home, farm, or business, and created a priority for building materials for Veterans’ Administration Hospitals

In many ways George W. Bush reminds us of Herbert Hoover, another president who revealed an underlaying contempt for war veterans. In the spring of 1932, approximately 15,000 to 17,000 World War I veterans, accompanied by their wives and children, congregated in Washington DC at the Capitol to lobby for a bill that would have given them their service bonuses which weren’t due until 1945. The Republican-controlled Senate, however, promptly ignored the Bonus March and callously defeated the bill. Most of the veterans merely gave up and returned to their homes, but approximately two thousand with no form of employment took refuge near the capitol in deserted buildings and shanties. Hoover was both embarrassed and frightened by the veterans, concerned that their mere presence might result in social unrest. In the meantime the Congress passed a bill which would have allowed the veterans to borrow against their service bonuses, but the veterans refused the offer and opted to stay where they were. In July the police were called in to remove the veterans but a skirmish resulted and Hoover lost patience. Angry and frustrated, he called in the United States Army (under the command of General Douglas MacArthur). No shots were fired, but when it was all over two veterans were dead and the Bonus Army was driven out with tanks and tear gas; the shanties were burned. Later Hoover insisted that the Bonus Army had been infiltrated by Communists, that it was a “polyglot of tramps and hoodlums.”

Granted, Bush hasn’t called out the Army to open fire on protesting veterans, but he has revealed himself as another Herbert Hoover in that he either cannot or (more probably) will not understand the situation in which many veterans currently find themselves. The mind boggles when it tries to imagine how Bush would react of thousands of angry Iraq War veterans were to descend on Washington demanding health care, housing, and unemployment benefits, and educational opportunities. Would he ignore them or call out what’s left of our National Guard to break up the demonstration? It’s hard to tell because when it comes to caring for our veterans, wounded or otherwise, George W. Bush and the current generation of Republicans are a lot more like Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover than they are like Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman. That said, it would do our hearts good to see a massive march of disgruntled war vets descending on the capitol demanding respect and services.

During the 1940s the United States provided government backed loans which enabled World War II Veterans to build and purchase houses. Some felt that interest rates of approximately 4.5 percent were too high, BUT as a direct result the United States saw a housing boom which was largely responsible for the creation of modern day suburbia. This is a sharp contrast to modern politicians who propose legislation that would help builders and the buyers of repossessed houses as opposed to those who are in danger of losing their homes. Indeed, the administration’s refusal to help the homeless extends to wounded veterans whose physical and psychological injuries often leave them in homeless shelters, looking desperately for adequate housing.

During the 1940s the United States government recognized the fact that a sound education was a way by which a World War II Veteran could improve his future. Today we have a semi-literate president who does nothing while the price of a college education soars higher and higher. He and the Republican Party in general pay lip service to the idea of education, but when it’s all said and done the GOP has done very little to halt the rising costs. Moreover, they talk about opportunities and preferences for returning Vets but in actuality we have a lot of veterans out there who aren’t able to benefit from those opportunities because, again, this Regime won’t do anything to assuage the horrors of physical and psychological injuries. Indeed, just about everyone who attends college graduates with a ton of debt on his or her shoulders, a direct result of the rising cost of a higher education. Don’t our returning Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans deserve a break? They did what they were asked to do, they served honorably, putting life and limb in jeopardy. Is it really asking too much to give them a decent place to live, some unemployment payments, and a decent education in return for that service? We don’t think so. But for some reason the people who started the Iraq War don’t want to help these young men and women. For some reason they think Iraq Veterans are undeserving after they risked their lives for our corrupt, uncaring leadership.

It goes without saying. George W. Bush is no Franklin Roosevelt. There is a tremendous difference between the way we treated war vets in the 1940s and the way we treat war vets today. Today we treat our veterans as if their service didn’t matter. That stands in sharp contrast to Franklin Roosevelt who was planning for the return of World War II veterans in 1944. Today we can’t even get the ruling party to act after the fact.

And that is a source of shame that the Regime in Washington has to live with.

SOURCES

[FARMING IN THE 1940s:
The GI Bill
http://www.livinghistoryfarm.org/farminginthe40s/life_20.html

FACTS ABOUT SENATOR WEBB’S GI BILL:
Post-9/11 VETERANS EDUCATIONAL ASSISTANCE ACT OF 2007 (S-22)
January 2008
http://webb.senate.gov/pdf/factsgibill6.pdf

AN AMERICAN HISTORY: 4th EDITION
Rebbecca Brooks Gruver
page 726
Published by Alfred A. Knopf, NY
Copyright by Newbery Award Records Inc

REMEMBERING THE GI BILL

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/military/july-dec00/gibill_7-4a.html

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