‘Voters look up to war heroes’

And… GENERAL Wesley Clark

I think that a Republican war hero who gets the nomination will have an advantage, because Democrats can’t smear with the same gleeful abandon that the Republican part seems to be blessed with.

John Kerry may not have won, mostly because of the gay marriage issue in Ohio, but the fact that the Dems chose him will have positive reprecussions in the next several elections. John Kerry’s candicacy has helped the Dems level the playing field and talk seriously about taking national security back as a signature issue. He gave us credibility, and there are a whole lot of people who now wish they had voted for him. Because he was right.

As far as Max goes, it had to be a happy day when that sociopath Reed went down in flames.

Actually, Pinkerton’s theory is a tough one to support objectively. Yes, Kerry got the nomination, but a lot of Dems with no service experience beat Clark. Bush got the nomination over vets, in particular McCain. And as CB alludes to (but no one has expressly named) Bill Clinton beat both Bob Dole and Pappy Bush. Admiral Webb is trailing. People like Hackett got pushed aside before the general; people like Max got beat by hatemongers. (Granted, not all of those were during active warfare — although according to Rummy et al, we have not been in active warfare for quite some time heading into this cycle, either). I think it is a theory that sounds like it is simply common sense that, no matter how logical it seems, falls apart under the weight of thousands of variables that make up a modern political campaign.

I don’t think people give a damn about military service and war heroism. And I don’t see any reason they should. Military service is one of our Sacred Cows. Grant and Eisenhower had the greatest claim to military leadership being converted to political leadership. Eisenhower was good, Grant was a disaster. MacArthur’s popularity was sky-high when he was toying with a presidential bid, but the fire never got started. Kennedy was a hero, and handled the Cuban Missle Crisis well. LBJ had no significant military experience. Bush, Sr. bailed out of a plane he could have landed, leaving his co-pilot to die.

Most of us Viet vets consider service in the National Guard in that era a lucky cop-out. Not dragging your lazy ass to meetings, however, was like spitting on the unfortunate.

I don’t consider military service some kind of magic or special qualification. For every John Kerry there’s an Oliver North.

We haven’t had true military heroes since we got rid of universal military service, have we? There was something about everyone being subject to military service which made us all admire those who lived through it, let alone who excelled in it. There were exceptions, of course (I tried at 17 but was rejected (4F, eyes); Rush Limbaugh was rejected because of a pimple on his butt/brain), but every male who turned 18, even Conscientious Objectors, got his draft card and could conceivably be called. Now that we have a “volunteer army” the rest of the nation suspects less noble motives in their service. Just a thought.

As if that weren’t enough, the contemporary Republican slime-and-lie machine would now find a way to ridicule Generals Washington, Grant, Pershing, and Eisenhower rolled into one, while awarding the Congressional Medal of Honor to chicken hawks such as Bush, Cheney and rest of the Bush Crime Family.

Strange country when a man like Kerry has to be sheepish about his decorated military service and an insecure cheer leader like Bush can waltz around with a camo codpiece and still get saluted by all those troops he makes such use of.

How about John Kerry, Al Gore, Bob Dole, George Bush Senior…? What is this about war heroes winning? The man with the military experience hasn’t won since 1988! And two terms? Reagan saw combat in…the movies. Nixon’s the one with some experience in the war. And a hero? Eisenhower of course, Kennedy in there as well.

I mean, in 2008 let’s run someone with ZERO military experience, against McCain no less. Hillary…..Richardson…?

We should not over look Senator Kerry. he IS a highly decorated soldier and true hero. John McCain actually never got a chance to prove his prowlness at times of war. He spent, as I understand it, almost the entire Vietnam War as a POW.
Senator Kerry has the baring and the experience to be an honest, productive President. He looks like a President should look and commands the respect a President should have. I beieve he will take our country forward and under his guidance we will again live in peace. He has studied and understands the terrorists. He understands the “New War” and it implications. He grasps what is necessary to end the conflicts and fight this war more effectively.
Kerry has what it takes, and I would be proud to once again vote for this good MAN.

The two words aren’t John Kerry, the two words needing comprehension are “Swift Boat.” The thing about Viet Nam was that we didn’t win it outright, so Viet Vets are at best misunderstood victims to those that can still remember the conflict. Gulf War I made Colin Powell a hero in the Grant, Patton, MacArthur mold, but then the lies about Gulf War II killed that.

What Pinkerton fails to recognize is the Rovian tactic of turning a candidate’s strong point into a weakness and his weakness into a strength. That why war hero Kerry is on the sidelines and idiot Bush is center stage.

Having said military service is a political sacred cow, I must clarify something. Veterans — and I’m thinking of Wes Clark, for example — who have seen war up close and personal understand that war isn’t like the movies. It is chaotic brutality that expands, uncontrolled, beyond plans and scenarios. War, or the threat of war, is sometimes necessary. But it should be the absolute last political choice.

Despite the carnage of WW2 and the defeat of Nazi Germany, the actual cause of war was the German conquest of Poland. In the end, Poland was never liberated from occupation.

For the most part, generals avoid war. It’s non-military leadership and popular demand that gets us into wars.

(A note on McCain: Before he was shot down [on his first mission, I think], he screwed up and almost sank his aircraft carrier, killing and injuring a bunch of sailors. I’ll give him this, however — he’s been a sane voice on Bush’s defiance of the Geneva Conventions.)

The only real reason to vote for someone who’s been in the military is to have someone with an understanding of the fact that war really is hell, and should only be taken up as a last resort, not a first resort. We have gotten into the mess we are in by a bunch of self-serving cop-outs – Bush, Cheney, down the line, every one of the cabal of worthless NeoCons, every draft-dodging Republican right-winger, all the chorus who knows not what they celebrate, who never were at risk for anything, who never held a dying friend, sending us off to war like it was a game.

Eisenhower has been looked down on by Democrats ever since 1952, but the facts of the coldest part of the Cold War are coming out,and it turns out that the man who won World War II in Europe wasn’t willing to re-fight it 10 years later. He consistently batted down the loonier Republicans, like John Foster Dulles, without making a public mess of it, the same way he had dealt with morons during WW2 when he had to keep differences quiet, yet keep the idiots at bay.

Interestingly enough, Grant started out much the same way. He’d fought the bloodiest battles Americans ever fought, and when he signed all those treaties with the Indians “for as long as the grass will grow and the wind will blow,” both he and his Quaker negotiator (whose name escapes me at the moment), who was appointed to his position specifically because of his advocacy of not committing genocide against the Indians, were sincere. Unfortunately, Grant had no understanding of how things worked in Washington, and was basically run over by the people who had promoted him to office. Eisenhower had the political understanding not to let that happen.

But semper fubar is right that the majority of people in the military (and I say this having been in the military) are just as moronic after their service as they were before they joined. The people with military service whose service should be lauded are just as small a minority as are the people who have done anything else whose accomplishment should be lauded in the larger society.

BTW – to Alibubba regarding Bush Sr.’s wartime service: the airplane he was flying, a TBF Avenger, had only one pilot. The airplane was on fire and would have crashed. What Bush Sr. was supposed to do as the pilot – and did not – was to stay with the airplane long enough to maintain sufficient control for his gunner and radioman to have a chance to get out. Without the pilot, the Avenger would always go out of control in those sorts of situations, leaving the crewmembers no chance of escape. Escape was the pilot’s responsibility, and George H.W. Bush funked it by abandoning his men to save his own hide (how “Bush-like”). How different the country would be if the submarine had missed him and he’d drifted ashore on Chichi Jima, where the Japanese commander was making sushi of captured Americans (he later committed suicide before capture, knowing what the Americans would do to him for cannibalism). Of course, Pa’s liver probably wouldn’t have gone down well even “with a nice Chianti” which I am sure the Japanese didn’t have access to.

It’s the kind of service, not merely the fact of service, that should be looked at. McCain may not have been much of a “hero” as an aviator, but after capture he went through hell on earth honorably, and you can bet your bottom dollar that’s why he has the positions he has about torture and inhumane treatment. (which is still not enough to get me to vote for him).

John Kerry could have just left things alone, not said anything after he came back, but to him that would have dishonored the men he knew who had died for no good reason in that bullshit war that is unworthy of one name on a wall, let alone 55,000+. It was his willingness to fight against the war as a result of what he learned fighting in the war that makes him the honorable man he is, a man I would still vote for in 2008 over the rest of the halfwits the Democrats are upchucking as “candidates.”

Tom:

Thanks for the clarification of Bush Sr.’s crash. I had heard it the way I wrote it.

Also, I failed to mention McCain’s POW time, and I agree with you that his ordeal deserves great respect. (Of course, that didn’t stop Bush from smearing him in South Carolina.)

A good post!