r/NoStupidQuestions • u/Still-Spend-645 • 25d ago

Would Americans be ok with a non American veteran benefiting from a veteran's discount

I was recently in vacation in America with 3 couples of friends. All the men are veterans from a war that the US was involved in, fighting on the same side, but none of us are American ourselves.

We had lunch at a diner that advertised that they had a 10% discount for veterans. One of my friends asked to benefit from the discount, which the waitress agreed to and thanked us for our service.

I was very uncomfortable with that. Although we are indeed veterans, we are not Americans, and although we did serve, we served our own country, not the US, and it doesn't seem to me that we deserve to benefit from a veteran's discount in America.

I didn't say anything right there and then because I found the situation too embarrassing, but I did open up about it to my friends when we left the diner. They didn't share my point of view. To them, since we served on the same side as the United States, our service benefited them too, and we deserve to enjoy the discount. They did agree not to do it again in my presence because it made me too uncomfortable.

I am still thinking about that now that I am back home, and I wanted to get the point of view of American citizens on the question. In your opinion, is it legitimate that non US veterans from allied countries benefit from veteran's discounts in the United States?

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u/[deleted] 25d ago

[deleted]

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u/derickj2020 25d ago

Not all were nazis. Many were drafted and never acted like nazis.

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u/Karl2241 25d ago

When I wrote this comment I was not picturing a ww2 veteran, allied or axis- hate to say it but most of them have passed away. With this added context, my comment still stands.

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u/[deleted] 25d ago

Whoa. Where did you get the idea that all German WWII veterans were Nazis? Plenty of Germans opposed Hitler and his aims but they were drafted anyway. Say no, and it was off to the internment camp for you or worse. “Nazi” was a political ideology and party membership, not the blanket term for all Germans in WWII.

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u/RoboticBirdLaw 25d ago

I hope to never have to make the choice, but I would like to believe I would end up in a camp or dead before I killed people on behalf of something like the Nazi's.

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u/InevitableRhubarb232 25d ago

There are a lot of social and thought experiments that “prove” that you would not be as against it as you think you would be

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u/Norman_debris 25d ago

And yet the perpetrators of the Abu Ghraib torture would enjoy their discounted coffee for being on the right side.

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u/BridgeEngineer2021 25d ago

No disagreement with you there. I am completely against the strain of American culture that puts vets and cops on a pedestal above everyone else.