Charlie Self wrote:

Kevin Craig writes:

The crowd who espouse "Candidate 'X' dodged service in Vietnam because
he didn't serve there", are denigrating a HUGE majority of their fellow
veterans.

There are roughly 9 million Vietnam-era veterans. Only (roughly) 3
million served in Vietnam. Those who bash service in the Air National
Guard (which, BTW, served in the very ACTIVE role of nuclear intercept
missions in defense of CONUS), or who bash Army National Guard, or who
bash active duty vets who were assigned to Germany or Japan,
effectively bash TWO-THIRDS of Vietnam-era veterans.

Not everyone went to Vietnam. Many were subject to deployment. Get over
it.

It didn't quite work that way back in the '70s. The ANG was a lot
different than today's ANG, and was mostly a refuge for those who didn't
want to go but didn't want to say so.

Nuclear intercept missions? From a part-timer, who didn't show up his last
year? They trained, on obsolete equipment, for a mission that never
happened.

And that latter part is the crux of the problem most of us have with
Bush's military service. It took connections and string yanking to get him
into the Guard. When he decided 'enough was enough' he lit out, with no
repercussions, and still got an honorable discharge.

I can assure you, as a former corporal in the USMC, that there was no
actual 'bug-out when it gets rough or boring' option that ended with an
honorable discharge. At least not for the average guy, which is what Shrub
tries to portray himself as.

I suppose that the US Navy officers and enlisted men who served in Boomers
were also dodging actual military service since they "trained for a mission
that never happened". Also the flight crews of the Strategic Air Command
who never dropped a single hydrogen bomb in anger. Also all the troops who
did garrison duty in Germany but never stopped a single Russian tank. Not
to mention the guys who spent their entire military careers sitting in
missile silos waiting for an order that never came. Or the ones who manned
the Nike sites and never shot at a single Russian bomber.

Are you familiar with the notion that "they also serve who stand and wait"?

But you'd find something to complain about if you won the Powerball and Anna
Kournikova and Britney Spears decided that they'd throw themselves in as
part of the prize, wouldn't you.

Charlie Self
"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in
moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification
for selfishness." John Kenneth Galbraith

--
--John
Reply to jclarke at ae tee tee global dot net
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)