He Said What He Said

It seems to me that there is an inherent assumption made about political leaders that states that, while they will from time to time disagree with the Executive Branch’s use of the American military, they never have anything but respect and admiration for the men and women who actually comprise that military.

And it seems to me that that assumption is not necessarily correct.

Why has this assumption become accepted as self-evident truth when there is so much evidence to the contrary? Goodness knows that there are plenty of “average” Americans out there who view the modern military with disdain and contempt, why should certain of their elected representatives be immune from this attitude?

Don’t get me wrong. I happen to be one who believes that Senator John Kerry’s recent remarks – that clearly came out of his mouth as disparaging toward United States Service Members – were certainly not intended to come out the way they did. Apart from anything else I might say about him, I will grant that he has at least enough common sense to not consciously make such a boneheaded comment one week out from a very important election.

And I have no trouble believing that what he wanted to do was insult George Bush. You know, the guy who happens to be the elected President of the United States – a man that John Kerry, as well as most other of the primary movers and shakers within his party – despises on a personal, as well as professional, level, in no small part because the American people chose him over Mr. Kerry.

And while I would assume that most people would start to recognize at some point that the worn-out jokes about the intelligence and academic record of George Bush – who had higher grades at Yale than did Mr. Kerry, before going on to get an MBA from Harvard – would start to wear thin, it is obvious that the sheer hatred of Mr. Bush, resulting from his insistence on actually being the President after winning the election, makes it impossible for them to see that no one but themselves is laughing at the joke anymore. Even those who believe it to be true have heard it far too many times for it to contain the shock value that all good jokes require.

In any event, I say all that to note that, yes, I believe that John Kerry did not intend for his words to come out the way they did.

But the fact is that the words did come out the way they did.

It was not unreasonable for people to take them at face value. And, contrary to his defense, they were not clearly directed at the Bush Administration, as opposed to the troops themselves. The fact is, prior to his “explanation,” he and his fellow liberal elites have given no one any reason to think that what he said was not what he thought. (It is a delicious bit of irony that this incident occurs at roughly the same time that Seymour Hersh gives a speech in which he describes the current U.S. military as the most violent and murderous in history.)

But what of his defense that, “If anyone thinks that a veteran would somehow criticize more than 140,000 troops serving in Iraq and not the president, they’re crazy.”? Sorry, that doesn’t hold any water.

I noted in an earlier piece that being a veteran, even a war hero, does not immunize one from criticism on military matters, or even from becoming an open adversary of his onetime comrades in arms. This nation’s history was born with one of history’s greatest stories of treachery, involving an American war hero who tried to sell out his comrades and his country. So don’t try to convince me of John Kerry’s immunity from being suspected of being at odds with the military’s best interests simply because he once served in that military (You did know he served in Vietnam, didn’t you?).

After all, the young John Kerry made his first national splash three decades ago when he returned home from the war and wasted little time going before Congress to accuse his comrades of any number of war crimes and atrocities.

It was also a young John Kerry who, when running for Congress, stated that he believed an all-volunteer military would end up being comprised of the poor and minorities – the uneducated lower classes.

Later on, it was – and is – Senator John Kerry, who has consistently voted against virtually every major weapons system that has come before the Senate. Of course, in his defense, he may have cast those votes to protect the poor, ignorant soldiers, sailors, and marines who would probably only hurt themselves if they tried to work a piece of twenty-first century military hardware.

Perhaps we, as American voters, need to rethink the assumption that says any politician that disparages the troops has simply gotten his words tangled, especially when all evidence indicates that, at best, such words may simply be a Freudian slip. And before he starts railing against those who, in his words, “misinterpreted” his words as people who never found the time to wear the uniform, Mr. Kerry should stop and ask those who currently wear the uniform how they interpreted his words.