Democrats Flip-Flop on Importance of Military Service
Jul 1, 2008 Political
It seems that the Democratic strategy is to minimize John McCain’s military service so as to put him on an even playing field with Barack Obama with regard to experience and ability to lead the country as well as the armed forces. Obama surrogates have been minimizing McCain’s service and repeating that it does not give him any experience needed to be president and the sole purpose is to make people think that McCain is no more qualified with regard to military matters. The interesting thing is that after 6 or 7 of his surrogates have beaten up on McCain (the latest being Wesley Clark) they have changed tact and now want McCain to stop discussing his military service (which McCain does very little of). Jim Webb, Democrat of Virginia put it this way:
“I think what we really need to work on over the next four, five months, and it goes back to the speech that Sen. Obama gave [Monday] and this little fight that I’ve been watching and that is, we need to make sure that we take politics out of service,” Webb said. “People don’t serve their country for political issues.”
He continued: “And John McCain’s my long-time friend, if that is one area that I would ask him to calm down on, it`s that, don’t be standing up and uttering your political views and implying that all the people in the military support them because they don’t, any more than when the Democrats have political issues during the Vietnam War. Let’s get the politics out of the military, take care of our military people, or have our political arguments in other areas.”
First of all, McCain does not go around discussing his military credentials because they are well known. I have never heard him state that people in the military agree with him because of his service though most members of the military are conservative and vote Republican.
Secondly, why is it that Webb and the others want McCain not to discuss his service? They want to take this issue off the table. The military angle is designed to make people believe that the military does not support McCain and that is why they told that flat out lie. The Democrats want to negate the military vote as much as possible and want to diminish any support McCain might get from the military.
The interesting thing about all this is that the very people who want McCain to tone down the military talk felt perfectly comfortable using their own service to advance their careers. Jim Webb touted his service all over when he was running for office and he made a big stink about his son being in the war zone. Contrast that with McCain who takes care not to mention his 3 sons serving in the military, one of whom is in combat. Webb had no issue when he ran a campaign ad that showed footage of Ronald Reagan praising him for his service as a Marine. Webb certainly didn’t have any objection when he used military women who endorsed him to quell woman who were upset with Webb’s article that stated women can’t fight. I guess it was OK to use his service for politics then because he is a Democrat.
When 2004 rolled around and John Kerry reported for duty and tried to trump his three months of service in Vietnam into an adventure filled, full blown, military career, these very people were behind him every step of the way. They allowed Kerry to embellish his record and to act as if he were a war hero while they ridiculed George Bush as a drunken, drugging, AWOL National Guardsman. John Kerry’s war experience was what we needed to lead this country and Democrats like Clark and Webb were pushing this executive responsibility as the salvation the country needed. Never once did any of them tell Kerry to tone it down or to keep his service out of the race. They actively pushed this aspect of Kerry’s life while ignoring the anti war protesting that he engaged in for about two years, or nearly eight times longer than he served in Vietnam. The Democrats wanted us to honor his service and vote for him because of it while ignoring the disgrace he brought to military members still fighting in Vietnam. All of this was perfectly OK because Kerry is a Democrat and they always have a different set of rules by which they play.
The only time military service does not matter is when Democrats are running candidates without any. When they run people who served we are told they are war heroes but when they run people with no service experience then we are told that military experience is not needed. Bill Clinton had no military service and gamed the system in order to dodge the draft. Not important, too much emphasis put on military experience so let’s move on, nothing to see here.
Now they are in the same boat. They have Barack Obama who has no military experience so now it is no longer important. If Obama had been in the service, he too would be reporting for duty and they would be trumpeting his great service as if he were Sun Tzu. Instead, they must marginalize John McCain’s service because Obama, like Clinton, did not serve. That is how they intend to level the playing field. They believe they were able to do it with Clinton and will try to do it again with Obama.
The big difference is that when Clinton ran we were not at war. The person who assumes the leadership of this country will inherit a war. It would be a good idea to have someone familiar with the concept running the show. The public knows it and the Democrats know it and that is the sole reason they are attacking McCain’s service and the value of it. They cannot compete in this arena and they know it.
We cannot allow them to denigrate McCain’s service for political expediency. His service and military experience is as good as Clark’s (despite what Clark thinks) and it is certainly far superior to that of John Kerry, both of whom ran for the office of president while emphasizing their military credentials.
This is one battle Senator Hopenchange cannot win so long as we do not allow the enemy to rewrite history, a feat at which Democrats are quite skilled.
Source:
The Hill
Tags: Democrats, jim webb, McCain, military service, Obama, protests, war, wesley clark
The Hypocrisy of Wesley Clark
Jul 1, 2008 Political
Right from the start let me say that I am not into denigrating the military service of veterans who served honorably. Wesley Clark served this country honorably and I do not intend to attack that service. However, his recent attack on the service of John McCain leaves open some questions about the ability of Clark to make reasoned decisions and to think cogently about an issue. To recap, Wesley Clark stated:
Because in the matters of national security policy making, it’s a matter of understanding risk. It’s a matter of gauging your opponents, and it’s a matter of being held accountable. John McCain’s never done any of that in his official positions. I certainly honor his service as a prisoner of war. He was a hero to me and to hundreds of thousands and millions of others in Armed Forces as a prisoner of war. He has been a voice on the Senate Armed Services Committee, and he has traveled all over the world. But he hasn’t held executive responsibility.
We will not get into the fact that if McCain’s military credentials do not qualify him to be the Commander in Chief or to serve as President in general then Obama’s sickly resume hardly qualifies him to be the guy who directs traffic on Pennsylvania Avenue. Besides, Clark already stated that Obama has judgment and character and that those items are qualifications for the job. Let us just look instead at the hypocrisy of Wesley Clark.
Four years ago Wesley Clark and John Kerry were running for the Democratic nomination which Kerry eventually won. Wesley Clark backed John Kerry. To Clark, Kerry’s three month stint in Vietnam qualified him to be Commander in Chief as opposed to McCain’s meager service. Or, as Clark might say [if Kerry were a Republican], getting a few splinters and leaving early hardly qualifies as executive responsibility.
But the heart of the matter is Clark himself. He ran for president which means he believed that he possessed experience that demonstrated executive responsibility. How did his service qualify him any more than John McCain’s? Clark led a company in Vietnam for exactly one month before he was wounded and sent to Fort Knox where he commanded a company of wounded soldiers. There are two other shots that Clark took at McCain and they are important:
“That large squadron in the Navy that he commanded – that wasn’t a wartime squadron.”
~snip~
“Well, I don’t think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president,”
Clark served as a commander for one month before he was shot and sent home. I hardly think serving one month as getting shot qualifies him any more than getting shot down in an airplane but that never entered his mind when he ran. As for command time, what does Clark have besides that one month? He was commander of the Allied forces in Kosovo so one could debate whether that service qualifies him as a wartime commander. Even if it does (and I believe it did), what about being relieved of his command qualifies as executive responsibility?
Like I said, I am not into dishonoring anyone’s service and that is not my intent here. I am pointing out that Wesley Clark is dismissing the service of John McCain when he had no problem with Kerry’s thin military resume (but very think traitor credentials) and Clark never felt as if his own military experience was less than qualifying for the job when he ran. This in spite of the fact that the very issues Clark brought up with regard to McCain very easily apply to Clark.
The bigger issue here is why Clark is doing it. He is trying to diminish a few of McCain’s strongest attributes, his vast military experience and his foreign policy credentials. The left is trying to negate this as an item that can be used as a comparison to Obama because Obama cannot win that match up. By reducing the importance of the issue they hope to even the playing field and have voters believe that McCain has as little experience as Obambi. Clark did this out of fear.
I predict this will backfire. Regardless of what people think about the war, a great number of them support the troops. Our military has higher approval ratings than the president and the Congress combined (and probably twice the combined total). Attacking a veteran is an unwise move.
General Clark might have handed McCain the White House on a platter.
Tags: experience, McCain, Military, Obama, war, wesley clark