the survivors

Thanks to G, I read "A War of Disabilities" by Ronald Glasser, in the most recent issue of Harper's. (And thanks to Redsock, who had the magazine in one of his many piles of paper.)

I wanted to post large chunks of this great article, but it's only available in print. Imagine that. I did find this excellent post about it by corrente.

I take exception to the idea (in the above post) that being kept alive with serious disabilities is a "questionable blessing". It's better to be alive, period. But people with disabilities need medical care and other support services. Why do we doubt the US government will be providing these to the huge crop of people whose disabilities they caused?

For an idea of the article, visit corrente, it's an excellent blog. For more, please visit your favorite bookstore to pick up a copy of Harper's. There's a really cool story by Jack Hitt about how some amateur anthropologists want to imagine our prehistoric ancestors as white. Kennewick Man is in fact Jean Luc Picard.

Comments

  1. laura k17 July 2005 at 07:05

    "Actually, being "only wounded" is one of those things that makes the war in Iraq seem less bad then it really is."

    That's the central point of Glasser's article - that because the govt doesn't count seriously wounded people, we can ignore the physical costs of this war to Americans.

    Just to be clear - neither this post nor the article cited says "only wounded".

    Glasser was a surgeon during the Vietnam War. He writes about the difference in the types of injuries, because of the difference in the mode of warfare.

    ReplyDelete

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