Posted on 10/05/2007 1:25:05 PM PDT by tpanther
A Democrat's Military Reform Package by Bill Roggio at June 17, 2005 9:45 PM
This was originally posted in March at The Fourth Rail but updated to address the recent attitudes and actions by Democrats towards Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, withdrawal from Iraq and other issues.
In March, Peter Beinart, editor of The New Republic and advocate of the Democratic Party taking a stronger stand of defense issues, wrote a column called (A Democratic Call to Arms) discussing why the Democratic party needs to take defense issues seriously, and how they can improve their standing with military voters.
He presented an interesting statistic: almost 18% of the electorate either has or currently has served in the military, and this number is roughly the same share of the electorate as blacks and Latinos combined. Mr. Beinart then goes on to explain Republicans are increasing their influences in the black and Latino community, while the Democratic Party is losing the support of active and retired military voters. This, combined with a report from The New Republic's Noam Scheiber that states the Democrats are losing white, working-class voters, is a formula for a long stay in the political wilderness.
Mr. Beinart then suggests changes the Democratic Party can make to get voters, specifically the military voters, to trust the Democratic Party on issues of national defense. His solution? Criticize the Bush administration on benefits issues, developing a cadre of national Democrats with real defense expertise, and make amends for degrading the military during Vietnam and afterwards by allowing military recruiters on campus.
While Mr. Beinart should be commended for thinking about ways for the Democratic Party to reconcile with military voters, and his suggestions have some merit, he is thinking small and sidestepping the obvious. The distrust towards Democrats on a national level by many in the military is directly related to the timid foreign policy put forth by the party, as well as its willingness to disparage current military operations and servicemen for political gain.
Those who serve are typically not as nuanced as the average Democratic policymaker; they see the inherent threat posed by dictatorships in the Middle East and understand the relationships between terrorists and these abhorrent regimes. The straightforward Republican foreign policy of reforming the Middle East, promoting freedom and actively hunting al Qaeda and other terrorists using a combination of military, police and diplomatic measures is appealing to the average soldier, marine and airman.
Blatant attempt to ridicule and undermine these policies for political purposes are easily sniffed out, such as backtracking on reasons to go to war when they supported the WMD intelligence in the past, or comparing every military conflict to Vietnam, or criticizing the military over securing weapons depots and losing Osama bin Laden, or criticizing and demonizing the PATRIOT Act without providing an alternative, or echoing the rhetoric of the enemy, or referring to every military action as a quagmire, and stating the United States and its military are torturers.
A sizable percentage of the military perceive these statements to be both anti-military and anti-American.
Here are some suggestions for the Democratic Party to increase their base among the military community.
Marginalize politicians that demand the withdrawal of American forces from Iraq, just days prior to the historical election.
Do not nominate politicians to run for the Office of President that blatantly lie about their military service; or have lied about the actions of American soldiers in Vietnam in front of Congress, saying they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam; or believed the threat of Communism was bogus, totally artificial?; or negotiated with the enemy during a time of war, essentially violating his oath as an officer in the Naval Reserves; or ape the language of Michael Moore.
Do not advocate for "Global Tests" to check American power, state the United States cannot be trusted with nuclear weapons, or propose to give our enemies nuclear material.
Do not issue campaign videos referring to Iraq as a quagmire, while are troops are honorably fighting and dying there on a daily basis.
Stop elevating the likes of Michael Moore, who referred to Iraqi Baathists and foreign terrorists as the REVOLUTION, the Minutemen and American contractors murdered brutally in Iraq as MERCENARIES and SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE. Distance yourself from radical antiwar Leftist groups, such as Moveon.org, who advertise with a campaign video of an American soldier raising his weapons in surrender.
Do not elect an antiwar former Democratic presidential primary candidate as the party chairman.
Quit pandering to organizations that refer to the detention facilities in Guantanamo Bay as a Gulag. Understand the true meaning of Gulag before you issue such a serious charge. Distance yourself as well from politicians who equate American soldiers with "Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime - Pol Pot or others.". Enough with the self flagellation over Abu Ghraib.
Reject attempts by members of your party to continually brand the War in Iraq as being based on LIES, LIES, LIES (as well as plots by Jews). Stop advocating for the withdrawal from Iraq.
The surface has barely been scratched, but this is good a start.
The behaviors outlined above tend to be viewed as anti-military, and dare I say anti-American, by military voters. These attitudes are more important to military voters than promoting politicians who can "speak the language of the military", increase benefits or apologize for Vietnam. Until military voters perceive the Democratic Party is serious on defense issues, willing to marginalize those who make such outrageous statements and put forth leaders committed to military issues, they will continue to overwhelmingly vote Republican.
Not that there's anything wrong with that.
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Not only do the hypocrats seem incapable of learning from their very serious past mistakes, it's very apparent that they DON'T CARE!
Just look at all the "support" of our troops from the hypocrats SINCE this article:
Smear after smear by the likes of John Heinz-Kerry calling our troops too stupid to get a real job...
Murtha calling them terrorists and murderers in Haditha (vets are STILL waiting for an apology!!!!!!)
Dingy Harry Reid....good grief where does one even START with this clown?
As far as distancing themselves from the MoveOn types, we now have the Betrayus ad!
All true, but it wouldn’t matter, in their world Iran is good America is bad; one can’t reason with the unreasonable.
True enough... they all get their marching orders off the same moonbeam.
LLS
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