Of Democrats And Military Service

Of Democrats And Military Service
by Raging Anura

Even before the 2004 Presidential election, the Democrats have tried to claim what I’d call the “Mantle of Military Righteousness”. And yes, they’ve made total and utter fools of themselves in the process. From John Kerry tossing his medals over the White House fence in the 70’s to John Murtha’s premature indictment of Marines and Navy Corpsmen in the Haditha incident, and not forgetting New York Congressman Charles Rangel’s bill proposal to reintroduce the draft a few years back (an admittedly purely political trick), the Left has blindly wandered into the political swamp of politicians’ military experience without a viable exit strategy (pun intended).

The biggest problem the Dems have when it comes to military service and experience is that it does not fit their ideological frame. Many of them would choke, sputter and protest at this statement, but ever since George Bush was elected to the Oval Office, people like Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Barbara Boxer, Charles Schumer, Cynthia McKinney and other leftist voices (oooops, I forgot Ted Kennedy, sorry) ideologically dissolve any fragile Democratic veneer of military pretense. The counterfeit wails of the “we DO support our troops!” crowd is vastly overshadowed by Kerry’s “I voted for the 87 billion before I voted against it”, Richard Durbin’s description of Guantanamo as a gulag, and Howard Dean’s claim to represent the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party when he was a candidate in the 2004 primaries (can you hear the echoes of the Sixties in Dean’s words, when the only thing the Left claimed about the troops in Viet Nam was that they were ALL baby killers?).

This is not to say that Democrats do not have military veterans in their ranks. This is also not to say that at least some of those veterans did not serve honorably. This IS, however, to say that their claim to military honor does not apply to the strategic or tactical situations in Iraq. Charles Rangel was an artillery officer in Korea. Murtha and Max Cleland are Viet Nam vets. There are certainly other Democrats who have served their country honorably throughout its recent military history. But the question still begs to be asked: how does this qualify them to pass judgement on the situation in Iraq? How do their military experiences, which are so radically different from what our guys and gals are experiencing right now, qualify them to pass judgement on Operation Iraqi Freedom? Not at all, I’m sorry to say. If they were relevant, I strongly suspect that they would have yelled it from the roof tops until they were blue in the face. Instead, not a peep; they try to dazzle us with medals (at least for those who didn’t toss them onto the White House lawn) won with sweat, blood and tears in jungle combat against the VC (nothing to do with Fallujah) or on the frozen hills of Korea fighting the North Koreans and Chinese (a far cry from training a new army and police force). The deserved honor bestowed by a Silver or Bronze Star for one particular feat of bravery does not transform well into omnipotent knowledge of military affairs.

What about the Iraq veterans that had been touted by the Democrats as one of their secret weapons to regain the majority in Congress? Well, let’s look at what the press has to say about it.
First, let’s give the mike to progressive magazine Mother Jones:

Driven by the unique relevance their experience has to current events and inspired by Paul Hackett’s near victory in an against-all-odds race in Ohio, soldiers back from the Middle East are scrambling to get their names on congressional ballots for 2006. Hackett, though, was not the first to run, or to lose. Marine Steve Brozak completed active duty in Haiti, Bosnia and Iraq before mounting, and losing, a high profile 2004 election fight in New Jersey. Fellow Marine David Ashe was outspent 3-to-1 in Virginia and lost by 10 points that same cycle. A Republican veteran in Wisconsin also lost, and Jean Schmidt, the woman who beat Hackett in the August 2nd special election, beat a different Iraq veteran in her Republican primary. All of this losing means that no Iraq War veteran sits in Congress today.

(…)In total, 10 Democratic vets are running, or considering a run, for Congress. (A few more may declare in the coming weeks.)

Wow. Way to inspire confidence. No Democratic Iraq vets elected? Ouch. Not looking good. And let’s be honest: if the hope inspired by those candidates (and no, they are not 10, since some of them are “considering a run”) is of the same ilk that the puerile optimism displayed by the Democrats in the 2004 campaign, well, it’s gonna get ugly for them, to say the least.

So here they are: (approximately) 10 candidates. What is the DNC going to do to help them win and avoid the ugliness I mention above? If the example of Paul Hackett, a candidate for an Ohio Senate seat, as reported by the New York Times, teaches us anything, the Dems will do exactly zip:

Paul Hackett, an Iraq war veteran and popular Democratic candidate in Ohio’s closely watched Senate contest, said yesterday that he was dropping out of the race and leaving politics altogether as a result of pressure from party leaders.

Mr. Hackett said Senators Charles E. Schumer of New York and Harry Reid of Nevada, the same party leaders who he said persuaded him last August to enter the Senate race, had pushed him to step aside so that Representative Sherrod Brown, a longtime member of Congress, could take on Senator Mike DeWine, the Republican incumbent.

Mr. Hackett staged a surprisingly strong Congressional run last year in an overwhelmingly Republican district and gained national prominence for his scathing criticism of the Bush administration’s handling of the Iraq War. It was his performance in the Congressional race that led party leaders to recruit him for the Senate race.

But for the last two weeks, he said, state and national Democratic Party leaders have urged him to drop his Senate campaign and again run for Congress.

“This is an extremely disappointing decision that I feel has been forced on me,” said Mr. Hackett, whose announcement comes two days before the state’s filing deadline for candidates. He said he was outraged to learn that party leaders were calling his donors and asking them to stop giving and said he would not enter the Second District Congressional race.

“For me, this is a second betrayal,” Mr. Hackett said. “First, my government misused and mismanaged the military in Iraq, and now my own party is afraid to support candidates like me.”

Mr. Hackett was the first Iraq war veteran to seek national office, and the decision to steer him away from the Senate race has surprised those who see him as a symbol for Democrats who oppose the war but want to appear strong on national security.

“Alienating Hackett is not just a bad idea for the party, but it also sends a chill through the rest of the 56 or so veterans that we’ve worked to run for Congress,” said Mike Lyon, executive director for the Band of Brothers, a group dedicated to electing Democratic veterans to national office. “Now is a time for Democrats to be courting, not blocking, veterans who want to run.”

But Democratic leaders say Representative Brown, a seven-term incumbent from Avon, has a far better chance of toppling Senator DeWine.

In other words: what I’ve said seems to be true, not because I’ve said it, but because Democrats are confirming it. Remember it the next time you hear one of them claiming support for our troops.