{"id":6593,"date":"2006-02-11T10:03:07","date_gmt":"2006-02-11T15:03:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=6593"},"modified":"2006-02-11T10:03:07","modified_gmt":"2006-02-11T15:03:07","slug":"the-troops-are-not-political-props","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/the-troops-are-not-political-props\/","title":{"rendered":"The troops are not political props"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just a couple of months ago, after a series of political speeches from the president on military bases, there was growing concern among active-duty troops about whether they were being dragged into a partisan fight<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The attacks against critics at military settings may have put troops in the awkward position of undermining their own regulations. A Department of Defense directive doesn’t allow service members in uniform to attend “partisan political events.”<\/p>\n

Questions have been raised about the military’s attendance at events where Bush says something like “they spoke the truth then, they’re speaking politics now.” Several members of the military told FOX News that Bush is inviting the troops to take sides in a partisan debate in his speeches.<\/p>\n

“This is a very bad sign,” said retired Marine Gen. Joseph Hoar, who led Central Command in the early 1990s and is an administration critic. “This is the sort of thing that you find in other countries where the military and political, certain political parties are aligned.” [\u2026]<\/p>\n

“Where you have our uniformed members being put in a position where it looks like they’re rooting for one side or another is very disconcerting,” said Greg Noone, a former Navy lawyer.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The questions and discomfort hasn’t stopped the Bush White House from trying to play up a politically-advantageous angle. This week, Robert Novak reported that Raul Damas, associate director of political affairs at the White House, has been “on the phone directly to Republican county chairmen to arrange local speeches by active duty military personnel<\/a> to talk about their experiences in Iraq.”<\/p>\n

Robert Schlesinger suggested<\/a> it’s not because the White House is interested in hearing more about the troops’ personal experiences.
\n<\/p>\n

According to the DoD regs, examples of prohibited activities by active-duty military include: A “member on active duty shall not speak before a partisan political gathering, including any gathering that promotes a partisan political party, candidate, or cause.”<\/p>\n

Without knowing the details of these arrangements it’s impossible to say whether the letter of the law is being broken here. But the White House — by extension the commander-in-chief himself (is that unitary government?) — arranging for active-duty military to speak at GOP events certainly seems like a clear violation of the law’s spirit. […]<\/p>\n

[W]hat makes these partisan, politicized events is the fact that they are being organized by (a) the White House’s political affairs office and (b) local branches of the Republican Party.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Pentagon<\/a> regulations<\/a> prohibit active-duty military personnel from engaging in partisan political activities. It’d be far more encouraging if they had a Commander in Chief who didn’t encourage them to do otherwise.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just a couple of months ago, after a series of political speeches from the president on military bases, there was growing concern among active-duty troops about whether they were being dragged into a partisan fight. The attacks against critics at military settings may have put troops in the awkward position of undermining their own regulations. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6593"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6593\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}