Pols and Military Service
Just who is it who keeps insisting on continuing the occupation of Iraq?
The following list came in my e-mail. I am posting it on my site for general information, now that Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania, a combat veteran, has been attacked by Republicans (Dennis Hastert, Illinois; Rep. Geoff Davis, Kentucky; various White House mouthpieces) as unpatriotic, and, essentially, cowardly for his demand that this Administration furnish a serious exit strategy from Iraq.
Dick Cheney then made a speech rejecting Murtha's criticism, but refrained from inferring that Murtha is a coward or a traitor. In my opinion, the reason that he retreated from parroting the despicable attacks made by other Republicans is, at least in part, to be found below:
Service Records, donkeys vs elephants
DEMOCRATS:
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REPUBLICANS:
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PUNDITS & PREACHERS:
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I do not recognize all of these names, and I don't know how many Democratic pols and pundits who did not serve have been left off the lists above. Enlightenment on this point is invited, together with supporting cites to reputable factual sources; and I'll be as quick as I can to change any of the current entries upon being supplied with confirmable evidence that anyone's service status is incorrectly reported here.
As it stands, I find the asymmetry staggering. Or maybe I'm just looking at it from the wrong point of view: you could say that there's a striking symmetry, between lack of personal military service, and an insistence on continuing the Iraq occupation indefinitely, even as it becomes clearer that the pretexts for invading Iraq were trumped up by the Bush Administration. This is a war built on spite, greed, the grand theories of clever but ideologically blinded minds, and sheer, childish machismo. It needs to be stopped, and our honor as a mature and relatively sane nation reclaimed.
That, at least, is my considered opinion (and I am pleased to note that more and more Americans are coming around to similar beliefs). I'm not prepared to go Robert Heinlein's route (he said no one should hold high office who hasn't put in some form of military service, but he also advocated flogging as an equal-agony punishment for crime). But at this juncture I think we do need to get serious about scrubbing all the supercilious, tough-talking, service-dodging phonies out of office, out of the Administration, out of the the courts, and out of their current domination of the "news" media. It will take a lot of elbow-grease, so the sooner we get down to it, the better.
Just my opinion.
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