I’ve never served in the military and I’ve never been to war. My father was drafted into the army right after the Korean conflict ended. He was stationed in Germany, where my oldest brother was born. The only time I ever considered joining the armed forces was immediately after 9/11. And I ultimately decided that I didn’t trust our civilian leadership enough to become a part of their armed forces. It was a prescient decision.
I have the highest respect for those that serve in the military and put their lives on the line both in battle and in training. And if I felt that the country required my service, I would gladly do my duty. But, since I haven’t served, I don’t spend much time battling the 101st Fighting Keyboardists. The 101st Fighting Keyboardists are pro-war bloggers that are not serving in the military and, generally, are not making a peep about raising taxes to pay for the war. In other words, they are pro-war, but they won’t make any sacrifice for the war effort. On Memorial Day weekend, I want to make an exception to my standard of practice. I want to say a few things about Republicans who won’t fight, and who won’t make any sacrifice for the war cause.
First of all, not all Republicans are non-veteran, no new taxes, pro-war chickenhawks. Bob Dole served honorably in World War Two, and nearly lost his life. His injuries were almost too horrible to describe. And he not only survived them, but went on to serve his country with (mostly) distinction, nearly becoming Vice-President in 1976 and President in 1996. Dole has always been a hatchet man, and in the ’76 Vice-Presidential debate he made a point about Democrats and war that caused the Ford/Dole campaign some heartache.
“I figured it up the other day: If we added up the killed and wounded in Democrat wars in this century, it would be about 1.6 million Americans-enough to fill the city of Detroit.” -Bob Dole, Vice-Presidential Debate, 1976.
Dole was adding up the casualties from the two world wars, Korea, and Vietnam. All those wars were initiated or declared by Democrats. Few would disagree that World War Two was a war that America needed to fight. As for the other three, the debate rages on. But, one thing should be clear…the last war a Republican President presided over and won, was the civil war. And since the Democrats are now a northern party, and the party of civil rights, we might even take credit for that one, too. It hardly seems right for the party of Trent Lott and Jesse Helms to take credit for winning the war of Northern Aggression.
My tongue’s in cheek here, as I am merely playing on the odd logic Bob Dole used to take partisan credit or assign partisan blame for war. All our wars have been bipartisan efforts. If Truman, Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson created the conflicts in Korea and Vietnam, they did so under tremendous pressure from the hysterical anti-communist ravings of the right. And if George Herbert Walker Bush and his son have made a mess in Iraq, they did so with the support of a good many people from across the aisle.
On the surface, it seems odd that the Republicans have gained an advantage in perceptions about national security. After all, they were out of power during our greatest military triumphs and during our biggest military blunders. And it was a Republican, Dwight Eisenhower, that warned of the growing danger of a political alliance between our military and the weaponry companies that supply them.
What changed things was the Vietnam war. The Democratic Party became the vehicle not only for ending that conflict, but for stemming the abuse of power that accompanied it. The Democrats exposed the rogue behavior of the CIA and NSA, and passed the FISA laws and other reforms to correct the problem. The Democrats responded to Nixon’s briefcases full of cash, with campaign finance reform. The Democrats responded to the overreach of anti-communist meddling, by prohibiting Reagan from spending money on the Contras. The Democrats attempted to limit military spending, and supported limits on nuclear weapons.
When we look at the Republicans under the leadership of the Bush administration, we can see that they are trying push back on every front where the Democrats made progress since the end of the conflict in Vietnam.
The NSA is again spying on Americans and ignoring the FISA law, which the Bush administration insists unconstitutionally limits the executive’s power. The CIA is torturing people to death, in violation of signed treaties and Congress’s own laws. The military budget is bigger than ever, and the administration has torn up the ABM treaty, begun research on mini-nuke technology and are threatening to use nuclear weapons in Iran. While Bush signed the Campaign Finance Reform bill, he only did so after threatening to veto it and for political reasons. And this administration’s hysterical rhetoric about the threat of terrorism is every bit as shrill and overstated as the old canards about communism. In short, it’s like we’ve gone into a time capsule, and it is 1974 all over again.
But in this thirty-odd year interim, one thing hasn’t changed much. Republican leaders are still pro-war, pro-huge military budgets, and anti-taxes, but very few of them are or have served in the military. Over at Daily Kos, DarkSyde has a list.
- President George W. Bush – served four years of a six
years Nat’l Guard commitment, some say after daddy’s friends pulled
some strings to keep him out of Vietnam. The circumstances of his early
separation from state-side service are still controversial (details)- Karl Rove, occasional Deputy Chief of Staff and alleged full time smear artist, escaped the draft and did not serve
- VP Dick Cheney – several deferments, by marriage and timely fatherhood
- Former VP Chief of Staff I. Lewis Scooter Libby – did not serve
- Secretary of State and former NSA Condaleeza Rice – did not serve
- Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist – did not serve.
- Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert – did not serve.
- Former House Majority Leader Tom Delay – did not serve
- House Majority Whip Roy Blunt – did not serve
- Majority Whip Mitch McConnell – did not serve
- Rick Santorum, third ranking Republican in the Senate – did not serve.
- Former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott – did not serve
- Rush Limbaugh – did not serve
- Sean Hannity – did not serve
- Pat Buchanan – did not serve
- Ann Coulter – did not serve
- Ralph Reed – did not serve
- Bill O’Reilly – did not serve
- Michael Savage – did not serve
- Bill Kristol – did not serve
We can add other luminaries: Dan Quayle used family connections to get a spot in the Indiana National Guard. Paul Wolfowitz never served. Donald Rumsfeld never saw battle.
Now, I don’t think that you need to have served in the military in order to have an opinion over the war in Iraq. But, if you think staying in Iraq is vital to our national security, then I do believe that you should be doing something about supporting that war beyond typing words into a word processer. At a minimum, you should ask that the people support paying for the war. It’s not right to ask the Chinese and the Saudis to finance the war and have our children sacrifice their wealth, health, leisure, and education to pay them back with interest. That’s neither ethical nor can it, in any way, be consistent with the Republicans belief that Communist China and Terror-friendly Saudi Arabia are dire threats to our national security.
If you support this war, and you are able-bodied, you should go fight in it. Or you should pay for it. When we remember our veteran’s this weekend, we need to remember more than their great victories. We need to remember the soldiers that were lost through hubris and overreaching from our civilian leaders (in Korea, in Vietnam, in Iraq, and even in Somalia, Lebanon, Panama, and Grenada). We need to keep our faith with our veterans by making sure they have a future to come home to, with health care and educational opportunities, and without a huge debtload to their erstwhile enemies loaded on their children.
On Memorial Day, we should remember that our soldiers have not only sacrificed to defeat totalitarianism, they have been sacrificed for imaginary and hyped threats, too. They have been sent into battle on false pretenses, without a plan for victory, and without the proper equipment. We’ve had too much failure of leadership from both Democrats and Republicans.
I’m not into teasing the 101st Fighting Keyboardists for being chickenhawks. I’ll let the veterans do that. And, you’ll note, the vast majority of Iraq War veterans that are running for office are doing so as Democrats. All I ask, on this Memorial Day, is that we all take some time to think about how our military has been run over the last sixty years. We can be proud of our achievements, especially the peaceful breakup of the Soviet Union and the liberation of Eastern Europe. But we have a long list of failures, too. Those failures have come at a steep price for our soldiers and they have had a stiff price tag for our citizens and, now, our children.
And, one last thing. Think about this. Can a war truly be vital to our national interests if the President would rather lose it than place another few 100,000 troops there? Can it be vital if he can’t even raise taxes or ask for any sacrifice of civilians to fight the war? The answer should be obvious…even to a Republican. Keep faith with our troops this weekend, and help us end this fiasco in Iraq. It has gone on long enough.
