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.
--------------------------------------------------------
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!
How dare you question their patriotism! /sarc
The party of patriotic traitors; they have to destroy this country in order to save it (for their totalitarian vision).
You cannot question that which they do not have... and there are less than a handful of dims that are Patriots... and none of them are holding office today.
LLS
Most of them are dead, actually
That just about says it all.
Only a complete moron would believe that any America leftist “supports the troops.”
Of course, only a complete moron would contemplate voting for one of them in any case.
They don't just want us out, some want us to lose!
that’s telling...then they turn around and have the audacity to ask if their patriotism is being questioned?
I don’t know what steams me more, that or the emasculated Republicans who don’t have the balls to point this article out DAILY on the floor of congress!
That all-too-brief collection of Democrat anti-war sound bites on Fox News should have been much, much larger.
A one-minute commercial of the worst of the Democrat rants, taken from candidates, Senators, Representatives and other Democrat leaders, would WITHOUT COMMENT, be the most devastating anti-Democrat party commercial of the election season.
If anyone on the Republican side could put together such an easy to assemble video, it would cost the Democrats a LOT of seats in the next election. Their own words would bury them.
I actually look for exactly that about this time next year.
What will happen though is the rats will come out like this gal did just before the elections and smear this medal of honor winner for lying about her boy Heinz-Kerry and call him a swift-boater. Just before the election. And people on both sides won’t have time to digest it, and many won’t even see it.
If they (Republicans) were TRULY smart, they’d start putting out a montage of hypocrat “Support of our troops in their own words” and simply add to it day by day! And do it right NOW and keep the rats on the defensive for an entire year...
people will be so fatigued with hypocrat excuse after excuse after excuse and see right through them:
“I’m CLEARLY being taken out of context”
“are you questioning our patriotism????”
“Rush Limbaugh pasted/recorded/photo-shopped all those lies, why...I I I I I never said that, and if I did I didn’t really MEAN it”
“Cheney has a secret ray-gun in the gulf of mexico and FORCED me to vote for the war AND disparage our troops at the same time”
“vast right wing conspiracy, repeat ad infinatum”
“Bush lied people died”
“It’s all Israel’s fault”
The War against The War is over...
Liberals lost...
It ended last wed. at the Democrat Debate, and it’s just beginning to sink into the collective ID of the leftists, although the sudden and Stalin-like erasure of Anti-War rhetoric from the usual suspects this week has been breathtaking...
BOTTOM LINE: “Free Stuff!” polls much better for the Democrats than War Opposition does, and by next summer, they will be claiming they supported the Iraq War, all along, and thier Media sycophants will play right along with it...
Well you make a very valid argument!
I have, now that you mention it, seen a little shift back to the economy etc. (Too bad it’s doing fine eh?) Darn, no kitchen table issues...AND weak on nat’l security???
...maybe that’s where the $5k for as many babies as you can spit out comes from! But they can’t even get THAT right, cause their kooky pro-abortion crowd will get as antsy as the anti-war crowd! LOL
Which gives me an idea...along with the disparaging remarks of our troops...
perhaps a montage of Gore, Kerry et al can be arranged in their own words about the Islamic menace? You know how evil Saddam Hussein was, his wmd’s, how Iraq MUST be stopped...how Bush #1 SHOULD have finished the job in Iraq????
it could go something like this:
Remember the last election cycle when the hypocrats had amnesia, voted FOR the war, then voted against it and couldn’t decide if they changed their minds OR decided they were misled by Bush; nevermind they had the exact same intel and actually called for war against Iraq BEFORE the war?????
Well they’re at it AGAIN!
THEN replay all the disparaging remarks, slanderous accusations, etc.
Of course, much of their base is so deranged they’d call it all a ‘vast right wing conspiracy’ ANYWAY!
I guess the libidiots are going to go all the way with this. Give 'em rope.
Very true indeed!
LLS
The Democrats MUST find a way to marginalize the Right talkers before next summer, or HILLARY LOSES....
It’s the only place that doesn’t play ball with the leftist Orgs, and that CANNOT be allowed in the brave, new nazi-like regressive totalitarian society they envision...
I saw it on pmsnbc. I almost called to support Rush! LOL
I’ve yet to see a veteran that’s served more than a term or two side with the rats. While I certainly respect dissent within the ranks, it seems to me less than 10% side with the rats, and I suspect more often than not, the ones that do side with them found out the military was just not for them. And I can certainly see how some would be against the war having been injured and/or having a hard time getting benefits, or going multiple tours with no end in sight, etc.
But most by far of the one’s I’ve seen (and their families), even when killed or injured, etc. support Bush or at the very least don’t support the Reid’s, Murtha’s, Clark’s etc.
I don’t know that I’ve ever seen one that served more than 20 years and retired, other than political types like Wesley Clark in support of the hypocrats!
Funny, back in the old days hollywood types supported the troops and even JOINED UP, like Jimmy Stewart.
But then back in those days the democrat party was Roosevelt’s.
Is there a medal of honor winner that supported Kerry for instance, during the swift-boat farce?
LLS
LLS
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.