The Ceremonial Mounting of John Kerry

A few days ago, when John Kerry remarked to college students that they should keep their grades up or they will end up in Iraq, he was having a Viet Nam flashback.
During Kerry’s war, there was a military draft. College students who maintained good grades got deferments. If they neglected their studies they could end up in Viet Nam killing rice farmers.

Of course there were other ways to stay out of harm’s way without cracking a book.

Your father could get you a cushy place in the Texas Air National Guard. If he could pull enough strings, you might not even have to show up. .
You could join the Air Force like Donald Rumsfeld and never fly a combat mission.

You could stay ahead of the deferment game by marrying and procreating like Dick Cheney. Wouldn’t you have liked to be a fly on the wall the night that Dick and Lynn learned that married men with no children could now be drafted? Well, maybe not.

If you were John Kerry, you volunteered to serve and did so with distinction. Then you came back home and told the truth about what you had seen and experienced.

For recent his stroll down memory lane, Kerry was pilloried for “not supporting the troops”. The seminally unapologetic Bush asked for an apology.
Was Kerry supposed to have insulted the troops by questioning their intelligence or didn’t Bush like the indirect reference the military being peopled by youngsters who can no longer afford higher education. Perhaps Bush didn’t like Kerry’s reference because it was a reminder of repeated lowering of enlistment standards so Bush can “stay the course”.

For some unknowable an entirely incomprehensible reason, Kerry apologized to the vermin that “swiftboated” him in the last election, calling into question not only the validity of his own sacrifice but also that of every man or woman who has ever served.

Politically, Kerry’s apology was disastrous. It knocked him off the campaign trail days before a critical election. It heightened the carefully crafted GOP branding of the Democratic Party as weak, ineffectual and confused and could serve to stem the tide of GOP blowback.

Philosophically, it was just plain wrong.
John Kerry isn’t disrespecting the troops. It is unquestionably and repeatedly the Bush administration who are guilty of giving our troops the collective finger.

They are ones who abused our military by lying to them and sending them to fight an illegal war to benefit plutocrats. They are ones who put the senescent and combat negative Donald Rumsfeld in charge of the military and support his unqualified record of failure.
Letting Dick Cheney who lacks both military knowledge or experience, whose combat skills amount to shooting a hunting companion in the face plan and who has been wrong about everything all the time plan and run a war is the height of disrespect to those who must fight it.

It’s the Bush administration toadies who insult our soldiers by giving away important support functions to war profiteers who provide shoddy equipment, not enough of it, contaminated water and substandard accommodations. The war profiteers highly paid mercenaries endanger our troops when their brutal behavior makes regular soldiers targets of the insurgency.

The Bush administration’s rubberstamp congress are guilty of insulting our troops when they vote to cut combat pay, won’t fund the VA, re-deploy sick and disturbed soldiers, cut support services funding, misuse the National Guard, make wounded men wait for medical care and nickel and dime them at every turn.

John Kerry should NOT have apologized for a deliberate misreading of his comment. Instead, he should have demanded that Bush, his entire administration and their friends in congress apologize for the very real and extensive harm they have done to the US military.
Since the Bush administration refuses to apologize for anything Kerry could have stayed on the campaign trail and highlighted the Bush administration’s neglect and abuse of the military. It is an issue that would resonate with every American.

That the Bush administration had the shamelessness to accuse Kerry of letting the troops down shows them to be the amoral opportunists that they are. They never stop trying to manipulate situations to their advantage. There is never any discernable moral structure in what they do.

That Kerry would even consider taking anymore bad advise from the same folks who trashed his hopes for the presidency is his cross to bear. The consistency with which advice "to assume the position" is offered and when it is supplied is evidence that there are forces in the Democratic Party that are actively trying to undermine it.

Until Kerry decudes to stand up to the amoral opportunists that are the GOP as well as those in his own party, he’ll never be the top dog.

Carol DW