Democrats and Veterans

From GOPUSA by Scott Swett

Scott Swett is the primary author of a new book on the 2004 presidential campaign, To Set The Record Straight: How Swift Boat Veterans, POWs and the New Media Defeated John Kerry. He is also the primary webmaster of SwiftVets.com and WinterSoldier.com.

The Democrats recently announced the theme for the day that Sen. Barack Obama's running mate will speak at the Democratic National Convention in Denver -- "national security and honoring veterans." This may well provide a hint about who the vice-presidential selection will be, as it seems unlikely that such a theme would be used to frame a nominee who, like Sen. Obama, has no military experience.
Before speculating about the most likely candidate, let's take a few moments to review ways in which the Democratic Party has gone about "honoring" the US military in the past.

In November of 2000, during the statewide vote recount in Florida, Al Gore and the Democrats sent lawyers to every voting district in the state, armed with detailed instructions on how to disqualify military absentee ballots. Peggy Noonan reported that "...Democrats on the ground, and their operators from the Democratic National Committee and the state organization and the Gore campaign, deliberately and systematically scrutinized for challenge every military absentee ballot, and knocked out as many as they could on whatever technicality they could find or even invent."

Early in 2004, evidence emerged that a small group of Army prison guards had humiliated and abused captive insurgents at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. The abuses were discovered by the Army itself, and those responsible were duly tried, convicted and sentenced. Nevertheless, leftists eager to discredit the US military seized upon these trivial events as though they constituted the most important story of the war. Sen. Edward Kennedy rose in the Senate to charge that "Saddam's torture chambers reopened under new management -- US management." By June, the New York Times had featured Abu Ghraib stories on its front page more than 50 times, including a string of 28 days in a row. The purpose was evident -- to undermine support for the military and its mission by persuading the public that American troops were brutal abusers.

Leftist filmmaker Michael Moore was a welcome guest at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, where he sat in former President Jimmy Carter's box seat. Yet Moore had openly embraced those who ambushed and killed US troops, saying that "the Iraqis who have risen up against the occupation are not 'insurgents' or 'terrorists' or 'the enemy.' They are the revolution, the Minutemen, and their numbers will grow -- and they will win." Ohio Democratic Representative Marcy Kaptur echoed this view, suggesting that "...Osama bin Laden and these non-nation-state fighters with religious purpose are very similar to those kinds of atypical revolutionaries that helped to cast off the British crown." This is a particularly novel way to support our troops -- by comparing their enemies to the patriots who fought for American independence.

In 2005, Illinois Senator Dick Durbin compared the treatment of terrorist suspects held at Guantanamo, Cuba to the crimes committed "by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime -- Pol Pot or others -- that had no concern for human beings." In fact, no prisoners had died at Guantanamo, whereas some fifteen to thirty million Soviets expired in the gulags, six million Jews were killed in Nazi concentration camps, and two million Cambodians were murdered by Pol Pot's communist Khmer Rouge. A Pentagon spokesman noted that all members of Congress were welcome to inspect the Guantanamo facilities -- something Sen. Durbin had never done. Public outrage eventually prompted Durbin to offer a qualified apology "...if anything I said cast a negative light on our fine men and women in the military."

In 2006, Democratic Congressman John Murtha falsely claimed that US Marines who had battled in Haditha, Iraq had "killed innocent civilians in cold blood." Marine Corps officials pointed out that Murtha had not yet been briefed on the event at the time he made his atrocity allegations. Charges against nearly all participants in the Haditha engagement have since been dismissed. The Marine staff sergeant who led the squad recently filed a federal defamation lawsuit against Murtha that has yet to come to trial.

Later the same year, New York Democrat Charles Rangel explained why young Americans join the military -- they aren't capable of doing anything else. Congressman Rangel said, incorrectly, that most members of the military "come from very, very high areas of unemployment" and denied that they "want to fight." Rangel further displayed his deep respect for US troops by adding that if a young man "...has an option of having a decent career or joining the army to fight in Iraq, you can bet your life that he would not be in Iraq."

Sen. Tom Harkin recently suggested that Sen. John McCain's military background is a liability rather than an asset. "Everything is looked at from his life experiences, from always having been in the military," said Harkin, "and I think that can be pretty dangerous."

Presidential nominee Obama also took a few moments last year to honor the US military for its ongoing campaign in Afghanistan, by suggesting that it consisted primarily of "air-raiding villages and killing civilians...."

Who then is the Democrat best qualified to continue this tradition as Barack Obama's running mate? The choice is obvious: former nominee John Kerry. Kerry started his political career in 1971 by falsely accusing American troops of committing genocide in Vietnam. He accused his own Navy comrades of war crimes.

His Vietnam Veterans Against the War created the dysfunctional caricature of Vietnam veterans that Hollywood and the media embraced for three decades.
Perhaps more than anyone else, John Kerry is responsible for the way our Vietnam veterans were treated -- with contempt and pity, rather than respect.

After his unsuccessful attempt to market himself as a war hero in 2004, Kerry soon reverted to form, claiming that US troops were "going into homes of Iraqis in the dead of night, terrorizing kids and children..." Kerry's own effort to compete in the 2008 cycle was derailed by his revealing suggestion to a college audience that "if you study hard and you do your homework... you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq."
So fire up the sound system. Launch the balloons. And let the honoring of America's veterans begin.