Big Dogs Weblog

Democrats Flip-Flop on Importance of Military Service

by Big Dog on Jul 1, 2008 at 22:36 Political

It seems that the Democratic strategy is to minimize John McCain’s military service so as to put him on an even playing field with Barack Obama with regard to experience and ability to lead the country as well as the armed forces. Obama surrogates have been minimizing McCain’s service and repeating that it does not give him any experience needed to be president and the sole purpose is to make people think that McCain is no more qualified with regard to military matters. The interesting thing is that after 6 or 7 of his surrogates have beaten up on McCain (the latest being Wesley Clark) they have changed tact and now want McCain to stop discussing his military service (which McCain does very little of). Jim Webb, Democrat of Virginia put it this way:

“I think what we really need to work on over the next four, five months, and it goes back to the speech that Sen. Obama gave [Monday] and this little fight that I’ve been watching and that is, we need to make sure that we take politics out of service,” Webb said. “People don’t serve their country for political issues.”

He continued: “And John McCain’s my long-time friend, if that is one area that I would ask him to calm down on, it`s that, don’t be standing up and uttering your political views and implying that all the people in the military support them because they don’t, any more than when the Democrats have political issues during the Vietnam War. Let’s get the politics out of the military, take care of our military people, or have our political arguments in other areas.”

First of all, McCain does not go around discussing his military credentials because they are well known. I have never heard him state that people in the military agree with him because of his service though most members of the military are conservative and vote Republican.

Secondly, why is it that Webb and the others want McCain not to discuss his service? They want to take this issue off the table. The military angle is designed to make people believe that the military does not support McCain and that is why they told that flat out lie. The Democrats want to negate the military vote as much as possible and want to diminish any support McCain might get from the military.

The interesting thing about all this is that the very people who want McCain to tone down the military talk felt perfectly comfortable using their own service to advance their careers. Jim Webb touted his service all over when he was running for office and he made a big stink about his son being in the war zone. Contrast that with McCain who takes care not to mention his 3 sons serving in the military, one of whom is in combat. Webb had no issue when he ran a campaign ad that showed footage of Ronald Reagan praising him for his service as a Marine. Webb certainly didn’t have any objection when he used military women who endorsed him to quell woman who were upset with Webb’s article that stated women can’t fight. I guess it was OK to use his service for politics then because he is a Democrat.

When 2004 rolled around and John Kerry reported for duty and tried to trump his three months of service in Vietnam into an adventure filled, full blown, military career, these very people were behind him every step of the way. They allowed Kerry to embellish his record and to act as if he were a war hero while they ridiculed George Bush as a drunken, drugging, AWOL National Guardsman. John Kerry’s war experience was what we needed to lead this country and Democrats like Clark and Webb were pushing this executive responsibility as the salvation the country needed. Never once did any of them tell Kerry to tone it down or to keep his service out of the race. They actively pushed this aspect of Kerry’s life while ignoring the anti war protesting that he engaged in for about two years, or nearly eight times longer than he served in Vietnam. The Democrats wanted us to honor his service and vote for him because of it while ignoring the disgrace he brought to military members still fighting in Vietnam. All of this was perfectly OK because Kerry is a Democrat and they always have a different set of rules by which they play.

The only time military service does not matter is when Democrats are running candidates without any. When they run people who served we are told they are war heroes but when they run people with no service experience then we are told that military experience is not needed. Bill Clinton had no military service and gamed the system in order to dodge the draft. Not important, too much emphasis put on military experience so let’s move on, nothing to see here.

Now they are in the same boat. They have Barack Obama who has no military experience so now it is no longer important. If Obama had been in the service, he too would be reporting for duty and they would be trumpeting his great service as if he were Sun Tzu. Instead, they must marginalize John McCain’s service because Obama, like Clinton, did not serve. That is how they intend to level the playing field. They believe they were able to do it with Clinton and will try to do it again with Obama.

The big difference is that when Clinton ran we were not at war. The person who assumes the leadership of this country will inherit a war. It would be a good idea to have someone familiar with the concept running the show. The public knows it and the Democrats know it and that is the sole reason they are attacking McCain’s service and the value of it. They cannot compete in this arena and they know it.

We cannot allow them to denigrate McCain’s service for political expediency. His service and military experience is as good as Clark’s (despite what Clark thinks) and it is certainly far superior to that of John Kerry, both of whom ran for the office of president while emphasizing their military credentials.

This is one battle Senator Hopenchange cannot win so long as we do not allow the enemy to rewrite history, a feat at which Democrats are quite skilled.

Source:
The Hill

Tags: Democrats, jim webb, McCain, military service, Obama, protests, war, wesley clark