10 reasons not to vote for a veteran

Stars & Stripes ^ | April 27, 2014 | Jim Gourley

[vpintheak]

Having served, and knowing some who are still serving, you are wrong.
Yes there is waste coming from the Pentagon, but it’s nothing like the waste in the social sector.
Ther’s no perfect solution, but my point still stands. America would be much better off is ran by veterans.

[MadIsh32]

Having worked directly with today’s military and with contracting offices of various Pentagon agencies, I am correct in both my assertions.

You have a military filled with liberals, gays, and those who could care less about the flag but go in for the “benefits” and a Pentagon that is so inefficient in how its money is spent that God forbid it is ever audited.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/18/us-usa-pentagon-waste-specialreport-idUSBRE9AH0LQ20131118

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/30/business/30military.html?_r=0

If you ever realized how much contractors were gouging the Pentagon (and these are usually led by veterans) the American public would be appalled

[Billthedrill]

Jim Gourley is an author, journalist, and former military intelligence officer. He served in Iraq.

Hey, that's a really nice citation. The problem is that he doesn't feel himself that it's worth anything. Or maybe the rules for authors are different from the rules for politicians?

[Night Hides Not]

What a dickhead.

Sums up your typical MI officer. Most that I knew were REMFs.

[smoothsailing]

REMF dickhead fits perfectly! B^)

[musicman]

"Look at the composition
of the military today
and over the past decade or so"



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[Night Hides Not]

One of my best friends in college went into MI from our ROTC class. He said most of his associates had several screws loose.

[x]

West simply demonstrated that he is a POLITICIAN - and as such, will do or say anything, to anyone, to get your vote (and his job).

His votes on NDAA and USDA Pigford, his “Justice for Trayvon” comments, and his backpedalling away from Odinga’s forgeries should tell you all about his character.

These were things that people could disagree about without anyone having serious character flaws.

West admitted himself that he didn't have the facts about Pigford and that he voted the wrong way. Maybe it takes some character to admit a mistake like that.

And Allen West's comments at different times about the Zimmerman/Martin case were a lot more complicated and, well, nuanced than your comment suggests. Unless there's something I couldn't find, it looks like you're smearing him.

No politician is ever going to please everybody. If you find Allen West so deficient, why not run yourself and see how far you get?

[discostu]

I wouldn’t vote for anybody JUST because they’re a veteran. Many of our worst politicians found a way to wear a uniform for a bit.

[Svartalfiar]

The current Congress has 88 veterans in the House and 18 in the Senate. That's a representation of 16 and 36 percent, respectively.

He also doesn't know how to divide 18 by 100.

Or 435 by 88. It comes out closer to 20.2%.

[Svartalfiar]

Some of his points are valid, IF you’re talking about someone who’s been in the military since graduating high school, and is running for office after ETS. They will be missing a lot of the experience and highly different attitudes from the civilian world.

But most vets that run have at least a couple of years of experience in a civilian job, have managed their budget outside of government-funded everything, and aren’t the complete goobers he makes vets out to be. Sure, you don’t vote for someone just because of military experience. Look at McCain, Kerry, him, etc., and you definitely don’t make military experience the sole plank of your campaign. But if the only thing I know about two candidates is that one served while the other didn’t, all I know is that one person has life experiences and has been given lifetime tools that help them become a better person. They’ve learnt discipline, punctuality, and so on. It’s a plus in their column. Not a minus. Just not the whole equation.

[smoothsailing]

When Jim Gourley retired from MI, the average IQ of the outfit went up.

[x]

6. We really don't understand the average American. Most current serving veteran members of Congress are former army officers. They are college educated and many have graduate degrees. They began their military careers significantly higher on the pay scale than their civilian peers, never had to worry about health care, lived in the ultimate gated community, bought their groceries at federally subsidized stores, got all kinds of discounts when living on the civilian economy, were often given a pass on state income and sales taxes, and their pay raises and career advancement were more or less set to a stopwatch. Maybe being in the military is a real job, but it sure isn't like any other job in the world, and for a lot more reasons than "the sacrifices" for which it calls. Don't assume that fighting for you on a battlefield means this person knows how to do it in a legislative body.

This is particularly obtuse. Is somebody who served as a lieutenant in the military somehow further from the experience of ordinary Americans than the parade of lawyers we habitually elect to office?

I'm thinking that a former officer probably does understand the men and women he served with better than someone whose whole experience has been in the bubble of the upper-middle or upper class professional world.

A veteran understands what it means to serve in the military and go to war and might be less inclined to go to war or to go to war in the half-*ss*d way that we often do.

[JimSEA]

Gourley likely discovered something about himself he didn’t like in Iraq. Certainly, in addition to leadership, the military teaches you to work effectively with a very diverse group of people. Does that go against the divisive nature of the Democrats. This guy’s reasoning completely escapes me.

[Old Sarge]

Heh. I’m a white male over-50 veteran conservative. I’d be dead of a mysterious illness before the primaries.

[TalonDJ]

This is a pretty solid list. I expect many flames from the ‘military service makes you above reproach’ camp. We have a lot of those around FR.

[Half Vast Conspiracy]

This is a pretty solid list.

It's a ridiculous list written by a lefty. However, I would never vote for someone JUST because they had military experience.

[Mike Darancette]

Much better to be a community organizer.