Different Slants

I’ve thought quite a bit about Viet Nam, the war I missed, the men and women who went there, and how much chaos and pain were inflicted on both countries by what I’ve grown to understand, since 1968 when I was eighteen, was a totally unnecessary war.

Just like Iraq is today.

People in Washington make political decisions about the fate of foreign countries, usually much smaller than the United States. What will fly in the Congress?…What the voters will buy…How will America’s leaders’ decisions affect their own electability and also will it hurt their Party’s ability to retain control of the Congress?

Simple questions, really, posed by extraordinarily experienced, highly educated, worldly politicians…overwhelmingly men who, safe in their bubble of leadership, send hundreds of thousands of America’s young soldiers across vast oceans to trap and kill hundreds of thousands of technologically inferior young men of another religion, color or political philosophy…and also their defenseless families.

These same deep-thinkers could instead send these same soldiers to repair our own crumbling bridges, or roads, without anyone shooting at them while they do that work. They could build new schools and hire excellent educators in poor areas of this country for a fraction of the cost of blowing up and rebuilding those same bridges, roads and schools in countries thousands of miles away.

Whatever your political inclination, those kinds of budget decisions are fiscally ridiculous. Same for hospitals, medical research and even saving disintegrating American nitrate film classics from the twenties. Art matters too. How smart, how visionary, can our leaders be to piss away our finite resources in such a lethal venture, where no matter what we do, the recipients in those countries will hate us for certain and most likely try to kill as many of the invaders of their countries as possible. (Read on …)

The United States, as a compassionate society offers universal healthcare to everyone within its borders. Any person who gets hit by a car, or passes out on the street due to diabetes, will be taken to an emergency room and treated. We do not allow people to die from neglect in public places.

What the U.S. lacks, is a sane method for financing universal healthcare.

Because healthcare expenses for individuals can be unpredictable and devastating, those who can get healthcare insurance usually do. Most people are insured through thousands of group plans sponsored by their employers. Many elderly people are covered by government plans. But 47 million Americans, for a variety of reasons, have no health insurance at all. As a result, the U.S. has the most expensive, but not the most effective, healthcare system in the world. (Read on …)