Benefits at Risk fromtheeditor
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With budget cuts threatening military pay and benefi ts, MOAA resolves to take action and urge the country’s leaders to treat servicemembers and their families fairly.
As they teach in journalism school and military staff writing courses, lead with your most important point. This issue’s cover image leads with
MOAA’s most important message for the coming year: military health care, retire- ment, and other people programs are under attack. Now is the time for everyone to get involved. Take action to ensure sacrifi ces servicemembers make for our country are recognized. Urge our nation’s leaders to treat troops and their families fairly. As we were preparing to go to press,
news broke that the congressional super committee failed to reach an agreement on how to cut $1.2 trillion from the U.S. bud- get. That’s very bad news for the military community. I refer you to “Washington Scene,” page 31, to see MOAA’s most cur- rent threat assessment. So how do you convey a complex mes- sage in terms anyone can understand? One way is to make it personal by telling a story. MOAA has created just such a story, in video form. We call it “Dear Sol- dier.” It imagines how Uncle Sam might tell troops they no longer will get what the country promised them when they signed on to serve. Check it out by going to The MOAA Channel on YouTube (
www.youtube.com/themoaachannel) and selecting “Dear Soldier.” And then send the link to your friends. Tell them to take action and pass the word to others. Having covered the top issue, we also bring you many entertaining and infor-
mative stories in this issue. For example, when the space shuttle Atlantis lifted off from Kennedy Space Center July 8, 2011, it marked the end of an era in American spacefl ight. It also marked the end of a decades-long relationship between the shuttle program and DoD. Read about how the military and NASA partnered in this historic program in “Out of This World,” page 64. In addition to exploring the frontier
of space, the military also operates at the extremes of planet Earth itself. “Operation Deep Freeze,” page 56, tells how those servicemembers stationed at McMurdo Station at the South Pole are pitted against a formidable adversary: Antarctica. “It really is otherworldly here,” says Air
Force Lt. Col. Edward “Hertz” Vaughan, commander of the 13th Expeditionary Support Squadron, Joint Task Force- Support Forces, Antarctica. “I don’t think people get tired of it or get used to it. … It’s like no other place on Earth.”
Whether at the ends of the Earth or in space or protecting the homeland, U.S. military forces always are on duty. As we enter the new year, MOAA resolves to en- sure the nation keeps its promises to the men and women who sacrifi ce so much for our freedom. Please take action, and pass the message to others.
— Col. Warren S. Lacy, USA-Ret.
*online: Visit The MOAA Channel on YouTube at
www.youtube.com/themoaachannel. 10 MILITARY OFFICER JANUARY 2012
PHOTO: STEVE BARRETT
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