In filmmaker Paul Verhoeven’s adaptation of Starship Troopers, military service guarantees citizenship in a futuristic — and fascist — regime. The policy is simple: Join the war on the alien bugs or suffer a second-class life. Verhoeven’s satire worked in part because it echoed real-world politics. Although the American government is a mite less radical than the fanatical world government of Verhoeven’s film, our politicians have long promised a form of enhanced citizenship to those who fight. The military welfare state supports active-duty servicemembers and their dependents, and once a person separates, they’re eligible for benefits that aren’t available to anyone else. They can receive affordable health care through the VA or go to college on the GI Bill or apply for a reasonable home loan. If they’re able to work, they might look to the federal government, which offers preferential hiring to veterans.
Veterans’ benefits once seemed like the third rail of American politics, but perhaps no longer. As Elon Musk and his DOGE goons slash away at federal jobs, they’ve laid off thousands of veterans with few repercussions to date. Alina Habba, Donald Trump’s former attorney and a White House adviser, told reporters on Tuesday that the veterans they’ve fired might not be “fit to have a job at this moment, or not willing to come to work.” She added, “And we can’t, you know, I wouldn’t take money from you and pay somebody and say, ‘Sorry, you know, they’re not going to come to work.’ It’s just not acceptable.” A day later, the Associated Press reported that the VA plans to fire about 80,000 workers, a clear threat to veterans’ care. The news hit home: My husband, a Marine veteran, relies on the VA for his health care.
Trump’s patriotism has always been bluster, a way to mobilize his base without much of a material commitment to veterans or servicemembers. That’s not so unusual for an American politician, even if most are not as blunt as Trump’s adviser, Habba. Anyone can campaign on so-called veterans’ issues; it’s much more difficult to reckon with the human cost of our bloody foreign policies. In the absence of moral accountability, the American government offers its youth a fragile bargain instead: Kill the bugs, and we’ll take care of you later.
But there’s no way to trust a promise that recognizes the humanity of some while denying it to others. What we do on the battlefield and in prisons like Guantánamo Bay reflects the domestic values and priorities of the American government. We have always reserved humane treatment for a select few while we force everyone else to struggle for scraps, though we insist the system is based on merit. Dignity is a luxury, meted out on the basis of race and gender and disability status. In such a country, the benefits we offer veterans rest on a shaky foundation. If health care and housing and education are unique privileges, not universal rights, the government can easily go back on its word. Veterans are only special as long as they’re convenient.
In betraying veterans now, the Trump administration merely hastens the inevitable. It has been popular to think of veterans as an exception to centuries of rhetoric and policy that cast people in need as takers and moochers; the uniform has, in theory, distinguished those who bore it from those who belong to a parasitical class. We see now that the uniform never meant all that much and that what’s given can be taken away in a flash. But policy does not exist in a void. In this case it depends on a Praetorian culture that achieved new strength in the post-9/11 era. We honor the troops with parades and flags and discounts at Applebee’s, as if no form of citizenship is entirely separate from consumer identity. Members of both parties brandish the uniform to win office and curry favor not just with veterans themselves but with moderate and conservative voters who say they respect the military.
By definition, American Praetorianism singles out military service for special treatment, almost sanctification. That can be powerful, but for whom? Although millions of people have achieved middle class stability thanks to the military welfare state and veterans’ benefits, their rise always depended on the whims of the government. An administration that is poised to damage Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid is an administration that can strip veterans of everything we said they had earned. Habba’s comments are remarkable because she is telling us the truth about the order of things. Veterans remain subject to political forces that prioritize profit margins over human life and dignity. With each week that passes, it becomes harder to deny that Elon Musk’s billions carry more weight than the uniform ever could. It is similarly no coincidence that the administration is purging veterans from the federal workforce while Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth speaks of lethality and warfighting. This is a cruel ideology, which treats humanity as a trait it can bestow or rescind. No one is safe, not even the troops.
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