Ghosts of Viet Nam: Bush, Kerry, and The War

DtC: Must you continue your raving Clinton-bashing in this thread about Bush. :slight_smile:

Of course, to be fair, the Dems should admit that their very own WJC began what is turning into a “time honored tradition” of sweeping a candidate’s Vietnam Era military activities under the proverbial political rug. (Unless said record can be spun positively.) Plenty of hypocracy to go around, folks, no need to hoard it for one particular side.

’luci: Yes, I agree 100% that releasing Bush’s records is the best we he can clear up this matter. But not releasing them is not, in and of itself, evidence of being AWOL. If Kerry has not released his records, he can up the ante by doing so. I’d like to see this. And if someone has some info on why it reasonably might not be a good idea for candidates to release their military records, I’d like to hear it.

I’ll check the solon.com article again. I went there earlier, and it gave only a synopsis. When I clicked on “read the full article” tab, it sent me to a registration screen.

John Mace, as it happens I was just reading this interesting article on Presidential military service. The Clinton episode is nearly unique in that he’s the only President since World War II who didn’t serve in some capacity.* Virtually everyone else’s service records before and since WWII are fairly well known.

The Freedom of Information Act allows the following records on any veteran, living or dead, to be released:

Name
Service Number
Rank
Dates of Service
Awards and decorations
Place of entrance and separation

I assume that everything available on GWB which falls under those categories has been released by now, because the press and politicians are well aware of FOIA.
*Clinton is an excellent example of someone using people from high above to pull strings to keep him out of the draft, and there is a pretty good record of it. But there is one dangling question. Remember all those allegations of treason against Clinton for organizing antiwar demonstrations in London? Then the guy disappears for two weeks and shows up in Moscow. Gee, you’d think someone would have looked into that… I wonder why we didn’t hear any more about it?

C’mon, John, not everything is about Clinton, and politely ignoring embarrassing situations in a candidate’s military career didn’t start then. Works both ways, too. Lessee …

McGovern, vilified as a peacenik appeaser, but was a decorated B-24 pilot over the hottest targets in Europe. (The Max Cleland strategy wasn’t new, either).

Nixon, spent WW2 running poker games in the South Pacific, adulated as a warhawk who pursued the Vietnam and Cold Wars as President.

Lyndon Johnson and Joe McCarthy, spent WW2 as REMF’s but arranged for a token milk-run bombing mission each so it would look good on their campaign bios. Yes, joining the service but pulling strings to avoid actually getting shot at is an example of what we’re discussing.

Eisenhower, the frickin’ Supreme Commander, derided as a gobbledegook-speaking bureaucrat more interested in golf than foreign policy.

Truman, a WW1 artillery captain … hmm, that really didn’t get used as political fodder either way. Give 'em hell, Harry.

Reagan, so RE an MF that he never even left home, got even more adulation than Nixon from the quasi-religious zealots for being there when the rotted USSR finally collapsed.

Grant, one of the worst Presidents ever, but one of the best generals. George Washington, a crappy military strategist and tactician but one of the two best Presidents. Shows how aptitudes aren’t transferrable each way.

WH “Tippecanoe” Harrison, shot up a bunch of Indians in an ambush and campaigned as a great military leader.

Put your mind to it and you can come up with a long list yourself.

No need to-- you did an excellent job. And that is probably the chief reason this issue about Bush has not gotten much traction. We’ve seen it all before…

I know that 'luci is trying to make the argument that a candidate’s military past is a bigger issue if that candidate, as president, has taken us to war. I disagree. Whomever we elect to the presidency is the Commander in Chief. I want him or her to base decisions about war and peace on the issues themselves, and not on some concern about how his or her actions might be perceived in light of something done 30 yrs ago.

I’ll take this rare opportunity to agree with Sofa King. Bush’s military record is nothing to brag about, esp if he runs against Kerry. But there are so many serious issues that confront us today, that I’ll be making my decision overwhelmingly on those. If both candidates offered the exact same poltical platform, maybe I’d use their past military records to tip the balance. But as close as the Dems and Pubs are on the political specturm (and from my perspective they’re pretty close), we’re still not at that point.

Exactly. We need to know what kind of Commander in Chief a job applicant would make, among all of the responsibilities in a President’s job description. Without his being an incumbent, this is the kind of thing we have to base our hiring decisions on. Four years ago, it mattered. Now we know better about “Bring 'Em On” Bush as CIC, and can and should evaluate him on that basis.

We don’t know what Kerry would do as CIC, but we do know he was thoughtful and responsible as a young man about military service in particular and the justifications for war in general. That being the only basis we have for predicting his own job performance in this respect, let’s go with it. Even if the decision most voters make is simply “Well, he couldn’t fuck up the job any worse than Bush”, that’s still enough of a thoughtful basis to decide.

Why does it always have to come down to this on this board?? I don’t agree, so therefor I’m a Bush asskissing, republican bullshit swallowing, mindless stereotypical desparate conservative? Oh, and I’m stupid too, so you have to type slowly to boot…nuck nuck nuck. No where have I ever seen folks so bent on labling others that don’t agree with them as on this board. sigh

Did you actually read what I wrote? Did you understand any of it? Or did you simply read the ‘So what?’ comment and then fly off the handle in a red bust of wrath? I’ll guess which it was.

Ya…so what. I don’t GIVE A SHIT ABOUT THIS ISSUE! Get it? Doesn’t make one whit of difference to me. I wasn’t going to vote for Bush before, and this piece of stunning news isn’t going to change my mind about it. My father and my wife ARE going to vote for Bush (unless I talk em out of it between now and November)…and this stunning news doesn’t make a whit of difference to either of them.

My question to you though, did you vote for Clinton? If yes, did it fucking matter to you what his war record was?? It certainly didn’t make a fucking difference to the majority of the people as the man was elected twice for gods sake!! They people don’t seem to CARE about it, one way or the other.

If they re-elect Bush, it won’t be because of what he did in Vietnam…it will be because they agree with his issues and policies (gods help us). If they toss him out, it won’t be because of what he did during Vietnam either…it will be because they DON’T agree with him on his policies and issues and/or agree with whoever the Dems run against him (I assume Kerry).

If that makes me a closet Republican Conservative in your mind, so be it. I’m tired of argueing with fools who seem bent on labling me because I don’t agree with their thinly veiled political bullshit.

-XT

It is possible that your beloved and her father are victims of the dreaded scourge of Cognitive Dissonance, the Number 1 threat to our nation! I have some brouchures I can send you…

The Number 2 threat to our nation, in my humble opinion, is GeeDubya and his malignant elve’s neocon fantasies. I believe a great number of my fellow citizens don’t, in fact, consider qualifications and issues so much as thier rough estimation of the person, do they like the “cut of his jib”, so to speak. Regretable, but a committment to democracy doesn’t permit one to qualify ones fellow citizens as deserving or undeserving.

Hell, GeeDubya fooled me! I was relatively sanguine about the 2000 election, a center right against a center left, no big shakes. Still would have preferred my candidate, the one with all the charisma of cottage cheese, than thiers, the folksy, down home cowboy from Kennebunkport. If I had known then what I know now…

No, this argument does not directly impinge upon qualifications, I’ve said that already. Slick Willy was a draft-dodging oversexed weasel, and a pretty good President. But if this sort of thing reflects significantly on our fellow citizens decision, it is important, dreadfully important.

Besides that, there is the fun of watching them scramble to cover thier tracks. That, and annoying Sam, is worth the price of admission. But I’ll certainly respect your disdain, and most sincerely promise not to drag you into this discussion any further.

There has been some talk implying that Senator Kerry somehow betrayed his comrades when he took part in the protests against the war in Vietnam. When Senator Kerry appeared before Congress I was still on active duty, albeit in a safe billet in Germany. Kerry’s statement to Congress was a wake up call to many of us. As junior officers, company commanders, lower level division staff and professional services types, we had all assiduously kept our mouths closed and our opinions to ourselves about the insane butcher’s shambles that Vietnam had become and the futility of feeding more and more good men into that fight. We didn’t even talk to each other. We had no public opinion except to toe the line on the approved view. When Senator Kerry spoke out we knew the courage and commitment that took and it gave me at least hope that sanity might prevail. When Senator Kerry asked how you ask a man to die for a mistake he spoke for many others who had no voice. There was no betrayal. Senator Kerry spoke for us. He said what we could not say.

Just to clarify, I’d also like to say that if Bush really is sitting on other records and correspondence about his service, then that somewhat colors the issue for me. Clinton released his stuff when this guy’s old man went after him. And, as elucidator pointed out, my old man isn’t flag-wrapped and bravely leading us from the rear to the precipice of war. There is some small interest in this, as a character reference.

But ultimately, it’s a small issue, if only because we’ve seen this sort of thing before. Concealing his past? Check. Stonewalling on documents of interest to the public? Check. At this point, it’s SOP, and really just one more example to toss on the shell heap. Cheney’s Chief of Staff getting busted by the FBI? Now that would be news…

If I had to make a graphically scrumptious one-page info sheet entitled, “How George F@<%ed You,” this issue wouldn’t be on it. But nevertheless, it is one more drop of blood in the bucket.