I’m not letting go of it, SG, because what you’re spouting doesn’t equate to truth. Please explain how those National Guard units which served in Vietnam got there.
Again: last time I checked, this country had a constitutional government which has the civilians in charge of the military. Military service or lack thereof is 100% irrelevant to qualification for office. If it weren’t, then there’d be that requirement in the Constitution.
Wolf: Correctomundo! I do believe we learned the lessons of half-hearted military adventures.
Since when were any significant number of NG units activated for Vietnam? I know of an Air National Guard unit from Sioux City that was called up for, I think, 120 days, but I don’t know of any others. Do you question that the NG was a safe harbor? Do you question that there were a whole lot more people trying to get in than the NG had slots for? Do you contend that service in an unmobilized NG unit in 1965-1974 is the equivalent of active duty as an enlisted or inducted member of the active armed forces?
This thread is a long ways from urging that there should not be civilian control of the armed forces. I don’t think anyone here has urged that. I know that I haven’t. My argument from the beginning has been that in a perfect world nobody gets to be master until they are first a servant. I think that is vaguely Biblical.
To me, a candidate’s military service is VERY important (at least for those candidates who were of draft age in 1973 or before). Don’t forget it was the LAW for you to register with the Selective Service and if you did not want to be drafted you had to have a VERY good reason for a deferment. So, when you hear that former Governor John Engler of Michigan failed the physical because he was two pounds overweight, doesn’t this give you a clue as to how willing this guy was to do his military duty?
Paying income tax is the law too. If a potential presidential candidate didn’t pay taxes in the last 10 years wouldn’t you like to know the reason ? If he were not forthright about supplying this information wouldn’t you be VERY suspicious of such a candidate? Again, this would be yet another case of someone trying to weasel out of their responsibilities.
Basically, if there is a law and somehow a candidate got around it I would want a damned good explanation why.
Question (aside): if being overweight was in and of itself a good enough reason to avoid being drafted, why didn’t those who wanted to avoid it just pack on sufficient pounds? I’m thinking that carrying around some extra heft for a while would outweigh a year or two in the jungle with a rifle. Or did people do this, and I’ve just never heard about it?
Dr. J
Anyone know of any elected officials anywhere who had CO status during Vietnam (that’s “Conscientious Objector”, not “Commanding Officer”)? Just curious.
According to the National Guard website
http://www.ngb.army.mil/about/
And, from the Guard recruiting website:
So, 8700 Air Guard and Army NG actually went to Vietnam during the whole war? At any one time post Tet (and pre-Tet, for that matter) there was something like a quarter million soldiers and Marines in country. 2300 Air and Army Guard activated for one year during the whole war? Compared to how many people on active duty during that eight-year period? Compared to a total NG force of what? This is no rebuttal of the assertion that the Guard was a safe billet. Those are simply not significant numbers when compared to the whole active force or the active force in Vietnam or the whole NG force.
I trust that Vice President Quail was not a member of Delta of the 151st.
SG: I couldn’t care less what the Bible, or any other religious work for that matter, has to say about servant and master. What matters is what the actual document which stipulates the form of government and the qualifications for office therein states. Once again, it is completely irrelevant what a person’s military service or lack thereof was in regard to their qualification for political office.
The rest of your rant posted far above is not worth even the time to laugh at how sad it is that someone actually believes that malarkey.
Monty,
The important thing is how a person lives up to their responsibilities as an American citizen. As I recently posted, let’s suppose a potential candidate earned 10 million dollars (gross) in the last 10 years and paid zero dollars in taxes. Let’s also suppose this person was within the law but some of the contributions he made were highly overappraised, some of the money was channelled through dummy corporations, offshore accounts, etc. Let’s suppose this was ALL technically within the letter of the law. Would you admire such a person? Would you want to vote for such a person? Would you be happy about this when you paid YOUR hard-earned dollars to the IRS while this person didn’t?
I’d say this is vaguely analagous to John Engler’s being an astounding 2 pounds overweight when the draft AND the Vietnam War were in “full swing” so to speak. Or perhaps even how did “Dubya” Bush and Dan Quayle joined the National Guard when both of these folks went ahead of LONG waiting lists. Again, they were within the law, but is this something that is admirable or praiseworthy?
Monty, Service to the nation when called upon may well have little or nothing to do with Qualification to hold high office, but it has some relevance, and for some, at lot of relevance, when it comes to Fitness and Suitability to hold high office.
While I do not want to put words in your mouth (a common debating technique around here) I get the idea that you might regard any military service on the part of a candidate as tainting him with incipient militarism. I say again, civilian control of the armed forces is not the issue here. The evasion of military service by lawful, though perhaps questionable, means is the issue.
I’m not trying to be dense here, but how is that relevant to the question that John asked?
The funny thing is, that if it was true, it actually supports my point!
No abbreviation about it, dude. I enlisted in 1971, and 1/3 of my basic training company were either Reservists or National Guard. They went through the exact same basic training (and subsequent AIT (Advanced Individual Training–read: specialty school) as I did.
For the record, though, I don’t think military service should be a litmus test for executive goverment office. In fact, I’d hope that the vast majority of guys I served with never held public office.
Monty,
Again, my point is when there is a war waging AND there is a draft in effect, how a person lived up to (or avoided) their military obligations is VERY relevant to how I cast MY vote.
I’m sure you read my analogy to paying income taxes. As I’ve said I think this is somewhat analgous to honoring (or shunning) military service.
Spavined Gelding, the USS Abraham Lincoln pulled into port exactly when it was scheduled to do so. They had made better time than expected back to the coast, but would have been underway for that day because the pier services, line handlers, additional security needed by carriers and the official welcome home were not going to be rescheduled.
This happened to me numerous times when I was in the Navy. i spent many nights looking at the shore because we couldn’t pull in until originally scheduled.
A moment’s thought will show you that this is true. There has been no outcry from Navy families about the holdup. If the Lincoln had been even an hour late, there would have been an outcry.
Yes, lets.
During the course of my active duty, 1993-98, I wasn’t aware of many sailors who resented Clinton’s lack of service in his youth. Of much greater concern to all of us was a high operational tempo combined with inadequate defense spending. War stocks and personnel were being burned out at an unacceptably high rate, without the President giving a shit.
President Bush, despite his lack of a stellar war record, respects service personnel and wants them to have the right tools for their job. I can quibble about some of his policies, but I can see that his term is making a real difference in the military.
We elect presidents, not enlistees or junior officers. Bush is doing the job for the military we elected him to do.
Well, technically, Saddam did not kick the inspectors out. They were ordered out by the UN for their own safety prior to U.S. airstrikes. The airstrikes were made to punish Saddam for not cooperating sufficiently with inspectors. His argument for non-cooperation were that there were U.S. spies on UNSCOM inspection team, a claim that was subsequently reported in many major U.S. news sources to be true, based on sources both in the U.S. government and the U.N. (see http://www.fair.org/activism/unscom-history.html ).
So, maybe knowledge that Saddam’s claims were in fact true were part of what tempered Clinton’s response…Who knows?
Well, then, you held yourself to a much higher moral standard than many of your conservative compatriots since there was plenty of sniping at Clinton from the Right regarding his avoidance of military service, much of it even before he ever took office and made any decisions involving war and peace or the military.
wolf and SG: Y’all’re blowing smoke and my tush ain’t no chimney.
Fine, but as far as I know most of the people in question don’t fall into such a category. For example, I believe Dan Quayle was in favor of the Vietnam War at the time and even to this day believes it was the right thing. He didn’t oppose the war; he supported the war but didn’t want to serve in it personally. (As opposed to Clinton who had a morally consistent position of opposing the war and also not wanting to serve in it…although he was admittedly weasel-ly in how he got out of serving.) See the difference?