Veterans' Day Strip Commentary

It's Veterans' Day here in the US, and I was going to do a post today rounding up all the comic strips I could find that referenced it. But one of the first ones I came across -- indeed THE first one I came across -- was Dogs of C-Kennel by Mick and Mason Mastroianni...

This gets at an issue that I think has been indicative of the federal government for at least all of my life, but has been put in sharp relief in more recent years. Namely, that the government supposedly of the people, by the people, and for the people very much is not any of those things. Especially the latter.

I am not a big fan of the military to begin with. Armed conflict is juvenile in the first place, and I am philosphically opposed to any ogranization that requires obediance without question by design. That said, I do understand and appreciate the often noble intentions many people have in joining the armed forces. The disconnect, though, is that the nobility they have in enlisting -- the notion of potentially fighting to the death for a set of ideals -- is not reflected in the people overseeing the organization.

How many stories have you heard about veterans having to fight for health benefits they were promised? How many stories have you heard about veterans unable to get the help they need? They're treated by the government -- both Congress and the White House -- as cannon fodder, discarded and forgotten the second they're not actively useful as a weapon.

You can determine most organizations' priorities by their spending. And while it varies from year to year and service to service, the smallest line items in US military budgets tend to be housing and health care. That there are 30,000 homeless veterans in the US is a tragedy in every sense. But I think, most tellingly, it highlights the imbalance between the nobility of people who volunteer to be part of the military and the ignobility of those ostensbily tasked with ensuring they're being taken care of.

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