JDs Bunker

I have had some time to digest all of the spin on General Stanley McChrystal’s lapse in judgment. I am reading now that conservatives are lamenting that he was a political liberal and that he banned Fox news from his headquarters. That he might be a political liberal should not surprise anyone. Politically liberal Commanders in Chief are prone to appoint Generals who share their political views. This is not about political leanings. It is about leadership. It is about leadership failure and on more than one level.

Soldiers like to complain about things. Usually their complaining is limited to their own circle of influence. Privates complain to other Privates. We used to kid that if Soldiers were not complaining, they were not happy. Within General McChrystal’s circle of staff, some grumbling about issues would be expected. Anything else would mean a leader who was surrounded by non-thinking yes sir men, which is certainly more dangerous than grumbling about methods. It is when the grumbling makes its way outside the circle and especially when it makes its way outside the organizational family that it is serious. It is a leadership failure and a symptom of bigger problems.

If General McChrystal had a subordinate commander or members of the commander’s staff publicly criticizing his leadership or the prosecution of the mission he would have pounded that commander into the dirt. His duty would require that he do it because such conduct destroys unit cohesion. Without a cohesive effort, missions fail. When he and his staff became publicly critical of the Commander in Chief, it was to the same affect. The General knows this. He is after all a General and would have known that his actions would lead to his becoming a dirt dart.

Why did he do it? The answer to that question is at the root of everything. There has been much conjecture, but only the General and maybe his closest staff can provide the answer. You will not hear those answers, however, until the retirements are final and the first pension installments are deposited into the bank. There is certainly evidence of a low level of confidence in the President and his staff and a high level of frustration with the mission.

There has been concern expressed about the Rules of Engagement (ROE) with the enemy for the Soldiers deployed in Afghanistan. In a nutshell, they dramatically increase the danger to our Soldiers while having the opposite effect on their battlefield enemy. I was always curious about whether they were actually General McChrystal’s ROE. Talk is they were and I have no evidence contrary to that, but I am a cynic and leaders do not generally endanger their Soldiers with unnecessary rules. There is precedence for politicians becoming overly involved in such matters. Vietnam.

There is a problem with operations to win hearts and minds. There is no question about the importance of gaining the support of the indigenous population in defeating an enemy. You can find accounts of us fighting hearts and minds battles in Vietnam. We would go into villages to help them by day and the Viet Cong would come back and kill the village leaders by night for accepting that help. It led to the expression of the time that said it is only when you have them by the balls that their hearts and minds will follow. That was the Viet Cong approach. Until we are prepared to seek out the enemy wherever he is and destroy his will to continue the fight, we will not win any hearts and minds. Instead, prepare for the video feeds of helicopters evacuating the embassy.

According to the media, firing General McChrystal was the President’s Truman moment. They likened it to Truman firing MacArthur during the Korean War. There is no comparison. MacArthur publicly opposed President Truman’s policies. The same media and politicians, who publicly savaged General Petraeus as “Bush’s General”, are now insisting that the President’s putting him in charge of the Afghanistan war is a stroke of leadership genius – brilliant. I am grateful that I do not have to live inside of any of those duplicitous minds.

If General Petraeus does not get what he needs and if he is bound by politics rather than the principles of war and if he has the same indecisive and dysfunctional leadership he too will fail. Most sadly, the United States of America will fail.

© 2010

I had it in my mind today to share some thoughts about getting to the root of problems and then solving them at the point where they began. It is that type of critical thinking followed by action that our Washington politicians greatly lack.

I started my problem list with the oil spill, for example. Find the root of that problem if you are interested in such a drill. Pun not intended. Start by asking why we are drilling for oil a mile beneath the surface of the ocean when there are many completely safe places to drill for it. Then work your way back from there. Eventually, you will arrive at a stalemate between ideology and common sense. Unfortunately for us commoners, those of us who actually rely on a productive carbon fueled economy, the politicians are rarely on the side of sense, common or otherwise. They live at a dogmatic juncture where utopian ideals are frequently overcome by reality and where problems are never solved.

As you can see, my self-diagnosed attention deficit disorder kicked in and my mind side tracked a little, or maybe, depending on your perspective it tracked.

Snarky little men perched on a dais looking down upon others, asking them questions that should be directed into the mirror and feigning outrage toward the television cameras are frankly incapable of solving problems. By their actions, I must conclude that their objective is something other than solving a problem. Any problem.

The “damned hole” will never get plugged by even ten thousand sessions of Congressional Kangaroo Court, especially when Washington’s marsupials are only interested in how to benefit politically from the real human suffering that the disaster produces. (Kangaroos are marsupials, not the typical political order of Rodentia found in Washington, but I’ll get to that in a minute.) Certainly, by their method they will never find their way to the root of the problem and then solve it.

In the President’s Oval Office address on the oil spill he summed up the challenge of moving our nation from carbon based energy to green energy by stating, “Even if we’re unsure exactly what that looks like. Even if we don’t yet know precisely how to get there. We know we’ll get there.” Let me interpret that into English. We are on a trip. We do not know the destination. We do not have a map. But, we are going there as fast as is politically possible. That is typical political problem causing rather than problem solving. I am not a czar of any kind, but I believe I can fill in the blanks for the President. If we hold hands and leap from a tall building, we know we will get to the bottom. I am also fairly certain that we know what that looks like. I also believe we will know it when we get there, even if it is for only a tiny fraction of a second.

Marsupials are interesting critters. They give birth to immature young and then have them fully develop in a pouch on mamma’s belly. Political marsupials are much the same. They have their pouches full of what is the beginning of many major problems. One must only look around to see the matured ones. A failed energy policy, Fannie and Freddie mortgages, labor unions, financial crises, out of control budget deficits, etc., etc. The mamma marsupial turns her mature offspring out when they are ready to care for themselves. The political marsupial nurses his immature problems along until they develop into calamities. Then he starts wagging his self-righteous finger while glaring from the dais across the top of his glasses and demanding to know why the target of his ire is unable to solve the problem he created. It makes perfect sense.

Let’s see now. What was I talking about? With all of the grand examples we have of ethical men of integrity solving our Nation’s problems that is on display in Washington, I want to wish all of you Dads a Happy Father’s Day.

© 2010

Wanted: Leaders. Must know who deserves a pat on the back. Inquire at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C. Possible multiple openings soon.

A lesson I learned quite early is that tough talk is not a positive leadership attribute. Good leaders, actually just adequate leaders, realize that all of the led need an occasional pat on the back. The target of those pats is a little higher for some than for others, but each is delivered with the same level of respect for its recipient. Regardless of the location it is delivered, the purpose of the pat on the back is to provide positive direction. A leader does not need to convene a seminar of so-called intellectuals to tell him who deserves a pat on the back or to advise him if it should be a high or a low pat.

A leader, who is a true leader, delivers his message in positive tones. Tones that are firm and honest and are meant to inspire action not place blame. A leader is not concerned with who gets the blame or who gets the credit. A leader is concerned with outcomes.

A leader knows where the blame lies and he does not need a commission to figure that out for him. He does not dwell on who is at fault because it is wasted time better spent on solving the problem. He knows where the responsibility lies because his first step toward identifying the cause of a problem in the entity that he leads, whether it’s an Army squad or a nation, was a long look in the mirror. If the culprit cannot be identified after some honest introspect, then he broadens the search by increasingly larger circles around himself. Most often the cause for problems is close by and failing to look there first is a fatal leadership flaw.

Identifying a major problem does not require much thought. Just flip on the 24/7 news and the problems will be everywhere. Being the pivot man in a circle and wanting that circle to determine for you where to place your boot, whether it’s on an oil company’s neck or on its CEO’s hind end, does nothing toward solving the problem. You just come away looking immature, wholly unqualified to lead anything and well, small like a community organizer. A person who has always been more focused on trying to build his stature by placing blame on others rather than offering solutions.

A leader’s job is to move his organization from problem identification to problem solution. It is not to place blame or issue what may be construed as a physical threat toward those who might solve the problem. The leader’s job is to tell the led what the fixed problem looks like and then ensure that they are focused on the goal and resourced to solve the problem. The leader does not have the time or energy to dedicate to low level back pats delivered to the incompetent. A mature leader simply thanks the incompetent person for their try and replaces them with someone else. For a reference on how this is done research Abraham Lincoln, Civil War, Generals who couldn’t get the job done.

I have encountered a lot of tough talkers in my life. My experience has been that action talks and bovine scatology walks. If you are capable of delivering the promised A-kicking you do not posture, spin, and blame and threaten, you deliver. In Washington, there is not much delivering going on these days.

Happy Birthday to the Warriors of the United States Army who have always delivered for us!

© 2010

June 14, 1775. Thank you.

The Army Goes Rolling Along

March along, sing our song, with the Army of the free
Count the brave, count the true, who have fought to victory
We’re the Army and proud of our name
We’re the Army and proudly proclaim

First to fight for the right,
And to build the Nation’s might,
And The Army Goes Rolling Along
Proud of all we have done,
Fighting till the battle’s won,
And the Army Goes Rolling Along.

Then it’s Hi! Hi! Hey!
The Army’s on its way.
Count off the cadence loud and strong (TWO! THREE!)
For where e’er we go,
You will always know
That The Army Goes Rolling Along.

Valley Forge, Custer’s ranks,
San Juan Hill and Patton’s tanks,
And the Army went rolling along
Minute men, from the start,
Always fighting from the heart,
And the Army keeps rolling along.

Then it’s Hi! Hi! Hey!
The Army’s on its way.
Count off the cadence loud and strong (TWO! THREE!)
For where e’er we go,
You will always know
That The Army Goes Rolling Along.

Men in rags, men who froze,
Still that Army met its foes,
And the Army went rolling along.
Faith in God, then we’re right,
And we’ll fight with all our might,
As the Army keeps rolling along.

Then it’s Hi! Hi! Hey!
The Army’s on its way.
Count off the cadence loud and strong (TWO! THREE!)
For where e’er we go,
You will always know
That The Army Goes Rolling Along.

Why should we be concerned about what Helen Thomas has to say? She stated about as emphatically as she could that, “The Jews should get the hell out of Palestine and go back to Germany or Poland.” Yes Helen, they should travel back to the lands where Adolph Hitler tried to implement his final solution by murdering all of them. Maybe we should be concerned because Ms. Thomas too easily expresses the sentiment embraced by too many in modern day liberal America, including our national leadership. The sentiment is that the Jews are the problem. If they would just give up, everything will be grand. Peace will fall on the land. It is also interesting that the President’s Counterterrorism Adviser refers to Jerusalem as al-Quds. Al-Quds is the Arabic name for Jerusalem. No surrender indicated there. He also has some other strange thoughts about Islamic terrorists. Especially for the man who is supposed to protect us from them.

The Muslim Dome of the Rock is built on the Temple Mount over the location of the earlier Jewish Temple. It is a symbol of conquest in my opinion. That is the first thought that came to my mind when I heard about the towering mosque that will be constructed at Ground Zero. I cannot read minds, but I fully believe that the Islamists responsible for the 9/11 attack looked upon the World Trade Center as the “temple” of the American system. They destroyed that temple and now wish to construct their symbol of that conquest at the site of the crime. It is astounding, but good ole and always tolerant America is just going to let it happen. Spare me the moderate Muslim religion of peace speech. If there was such a thing, all of the moderates would be out there every day confronting those who are tainting their faith with murderous acts. But they are not. Silence is complicit.

Our free society is wonderful and I would not want to replace it with another, but we need not allow our freedom to be suicidal. Try clinging to your Bible in Saudi Arabia as they government’s religious cops wrestle it away from you and toss it into the shredder. Saudi Arabia is only an example of what is common. The United States of America needs to tolerate those who are tolerant of us, period. You will find no Christian Churches in Saudi Arabia, the center of Islam.

I do not know what anyone’s religious leanings are, except for those who openly express them and I do not know whether anyone who might read this ever reads from the Bible. And if they do read it, I cannot say if they believe it. So, I can only state what I believe.

Reverend Archbishop James Ussher, in his Annals of the World first published in 1658, places the following Old Testament passage at 1921 BC.

The LORD had said to Abram, “Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you.

 ”I will make you into a great nation
       and I will bless you;
       I will make your name great,
       and you will be a blessing.

 I will bless those who bless you,
       and whoever curses you I will curse;
       and all peoples on earth
       will be blessed through you.”

Genesis 12:1-3 (NIV)

This passage from the book of Genesis, the first book of the Old Testament, is what I believe. The Promised Land was Canaan. Canaan is the early name for what is now called Israel or Palestine.

To my knowledge, the United States of America does not appear in any context in the Bible. But, I am neither a Biblical scholar nor theologian. What I do know is what I believe and I believe that the United States is moving closer to those who will be cursed and farther away from those who will be blessed. In that context, understand that since the Israelis returned to their Biblical homeland; the United States has stood by them. That commitment appears to be weakening daily.

The Gaza blockade incident and Turkish threats are also interesting in light of this Biblical prophecy of Israel being attacked by an Army from the North. Israel stands alone in this prophecy.

 

“Son of man, prophesy against Gog and say: ‘This is what the Sovereign LORD says: I am against you, O Gog, chief prince of Meshech and Tubal. I will turn you around and drag you along. I will bring you from the far north and send you against the mountains of Israel. Then I will strike your bow from your left hand and make your arrows drop from your right hand. On the mountains of Israel you will fall, you and all your troops and the nations with you. I will give you as food to all kinds of carrion birds and to the wild animals. You will fall in the open field, for I have spoken, declares the Sovereign LORD. I will send fire on Magog and on those who live in safety in the coastlands, and they will know that I am the LORD.

Ezekiel 39: 1-6 (NIV)

The question for us is will America stand with Israel or will Israel stand alone? Will we bless or curse Israel?

I only know where I stand.

© 2010

D-Day, June 6, 1944

President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s D-Day Prayer

My fellow Americans: Last night, when I spoke with you about the fall of Rome, I knew at that moment that troops of the United States and our allies were crossing the Channel in another and greater operation. It has come to pass with success thus far.

And so, in this poignant hour, I ask you to join with me in prayer:

Almighty God: Our sons, pride of our Nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our Republic, our religion, and our civilization, and to set free a suffering humanity.

Lead them straight and true; give strength to their arms, stoutness to their hearts, steadfastness in their faith.

They will need Thy blessings. Their road will be long and hard. For the enemy is strong. He may hurl back our forces. Success may not come with rushing speed, but we shall return again and again; and we know that by Thy grace, and by the righteousness of our cause, our sons will triumph.

They will be sore tried, by night and by day, without rest-until the victory is won. The darkness will be rent by noise and flame. Men’s souls will be shaken with the violences of war.

For these men are lately drawn from the ways of peace. They fight not for the lust of conquest. They fight to end conquest. They fight to liberate. They fight to let justice arise, and tolerance and good will among all Thy people. They yearn but for the end of battle, for their return to the haven of home.

Some will never return. Embrace these, Father, and receive them, Thy heroic servants, into Thy kingdom.

And for us at home – fathers, mothers, children, wives, sisters, and brothers of brave men overseas – whose thoughts and prayers are ever with them – help us, Almighty God, to rededicate ourselves in renewed faith in Thee in this hour of great sacrifice.

Many people have urged that I call the Nation into a single day of special prayer. But because the road is long and the desire is great, I ask that our people devote themselves in a continuance of prayer. As we rise to each new day, and again when each day is spent, let words of prayer be on our lips, invoking Thy help to our efforts.

Give us strength, too – strength in our daily tasks, to redouble the contributions we make in the physical and the material support of our armed forces.

And let our hearts be stout, to wait out the long travail, to bear sorrows that may come, to impart our courage unto our sons wheresoever they may be.

And, O Lord, give us Faith. Give us Faith in Thee; Faith in our sons; Faith in each other; Faith in our united crusade. Let not the keenness of our spirit ever be dulled. Let not the impacts of temporary events, of temporal matters of but fleeting moment let not these deter us in our unconquerable purpose.

With Thy blessing, we shall prevail over the unholy forces of our enemy. Help us to conquer the apostles of greed and racial arrogancies. Lead us to the saving of our country, and with our sister Nations into a world unity that will spell a sure peace a peace invulnerable to the schemings of unworthy men. And a peace that will let all of men live in freedom, reaping the just rewards of their honest toil.

Thy will be done, Almighty God.

Amen.

In Flanders Fields

Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, 1872-1918

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie

In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies blow
In Flanders fields.

As Memorial Day approaches, the pace in Washington to repeal the law that prohibits homosexuals from serving in the military is picking up. Yes that is the law often mislabeled as Bill Clinton’s Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy whose purpose was to circumvent the law by allowing homosexuals to serve as long as they did not reveal their sexual orientation.

Military service is not a right and repealing the law is not about service. Just as the percentage of Americans who serve and have served in our all volunteer force is miniscule there is also not a huge homosexual force out there just waiting for their opportunity to serve their country in the Armed Forces. Those who truly do want to serve, like everyone else, do so and keep their sex lives private. No, this is not about service just as homosexual marriage is not about marriage. It is about normalizing homosexual behavior. American society must decide if they will accept or reject the normalization of this behavior.

When the law is repealed and military service becomes a right, albeit man-given, and we have that great surge of homosexual patriots knocking down the doors to enlist into the Infantry, how then do we turn anyone away from military service? Will we need to accommodate the physically and mentally disabled? A right after all cannot be selectively distributed. Can it? If it is indeed a right?

The world’s greatest society made it legal to murder unborn children. Millions of the most innocent and defenseless among us have been killed by all of us. It is a holocaust greater in magnitude than any genocide known in recorded human history. In that respect, I suppose that accepting homosexuality as normal does not make us any less moral. It just removes another stone from our crumbling national foundation.

Maybe it is time for each of us to do some soul-searching. What is it that we accept and reject? What do we stand for? What is at our center? What is at America’s center?

I spent some years in Europe. I have pictures taken of gargantuan churches. Typically in the oldest cities the church was built first in the center and the town spread out around it. These huge structures are great architecture to view and photograph, but on Sunday they mostly sit empty. Once at their center, the churches are now mostly rejected.

For many years in America, there has been an all out assault on anything related to Christianity. Our Churches are closing faster than they are opening and the open ones are far from filled to capacity. You hear it all of the time from people who say they reject Christianity because they believe Christians are hypocrites. Everyone needs to be honest. Either you accept God or you reject God. At the root, it is not about any group of people or about any religious denomination. It is about you and your relationship with God, period. So what do you accept and what do you reject.

What do you stand for? What principles guide you? What is it that you feel strongly enough about to lay down your life to defend? Anything? What about the unalienable rights endowed to you by your creator as outlined in our Declaration of Independence? Are you willing to defend those with your life? Are you? A fitting question to ask yourself during the time we set aside to remember those who made that very sacrifice for you.

What is at your center? Is it man-given things that can be taken from you or lost in the blink of any eye? When those man-given things at your center are taken way, will you crumble into a heap?

What is at America’s center?

Romans 1:21-32 (New International Version)

For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.

Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.

Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.

Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.

Presidential Proclamation Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender Pride Month

© 2010

I finally watched Avatar. The story line carried the typical Hollywood social messages. The stereotypical portrayal of the war mongering mercenary military force. The evil corporation out to exploit the people and the planet for greed. The chain smoking scientist who only wanted to save the planet and its people dying at the hands of the evil mercenary leader. Worship of the mother planet, complete with its rituals that looked like a combination of Hare Krishna and transcendental meditation.

It is the liberal meme, vintage 1960s to mid 1970s. I would have selected Vietnam War era rock and roll for the musical score. Barry McGuire’s Eve of Destruction when the bulldozers rolled in and the Rolling Stones’ Paint it Black would have worked for the battle scene. I am somewhat nostalgic.

Visually it was spectacular, but there was one nagging little thing. It kept reminding me of those black light posters that plastered the walls wherever hippies gathered in the 60s. I could practically smell the marijuana and burning incense. Thankfully there was no scene where the green people all held hands and walked over a rainbow although they did fly around on Technicolor birds.

Even though I had some trouble focusing, it was still entertaining.

Parts of the story I felt were quite appropriate for today. What about the concept of defending your home against uninvited aliens? Yep, the people of color did that well. When the big battle ended, they rounded up all of the mostly white uninvited guest workers and put them on the first thing smokin’ back toward their dying planet. There is another interesting piece. How did the planet’s native inhabitants behave when one of the immigrants wanted to learn their ways, their language and their culture? They welcomed him.

Doggone. Mr. Cameron made a perfect argument for legal immigration and assimilation. Do you reckon he meant to?

So much for movie reviews.

The other day, I had a very rare experience. I was speechless, at a complete loss for words. I was angry too. My mouth dried up. I could not have spit if I wanted to. It started when, from the grounds of the Whitehouse standing beside the President of the United States, the president of Mexico attacked a sovereign state of the United States and by extension the sovereignty of our country. How did our President react? He agreed. When the leader of my country cannot find it within himself to challenge such conduct, but instead agrees with it he is not the leader of my country. He is not a man I can trust or willingly follow.

That little scene disappointed me as much as it made me angry. But, it gets better. Calderon had the same words to share with a joint gathering of both houses of the United States Congress. All of the Democrats, the Attorney General and the Director of Homeland Security gave him a standing ovation for it. Wow! We are in serious trouble. We cannot even count on the people who represent us to defend our national honor against the leader of one of the most corrupt governments on the planet.

Sometimes, I believe that the people running our country want to provoke Americans into the streets, want to provoke civil unrest. It is just the crisis they need to further restrict civil liberties or even declare martial law. What else could be their point? You can only poke someone in the eye for so long before they break your fingers.

From now until Election Day, the video of the Democrat party in unison giving a standing ovation to a foreign leader attacking our sovereignty should be played continually.

In one Avatar scene, a green warrior leaps into the back of the transport aircraft and starts tossing people out. That is what we need to do to Congress in November. Toss a lot of people out. That is, if our country survives until November.

© 2010

More than 1.3 million Americans have lost their lives fighting our nation’s wars. On Memorial Day this year, before the barbeque grill heats up, take some time to remember them. Following the counsel of General George S. Patton Jr. take a knee and a silent moment and thank God that such people lived.

It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived. – General George S. Patton Jr.

Do you ever feel bone tired? Not physically tired like you feel after working many days straight with little rest, food, sleep or the comforts of home as our Soldiers often do. I mean the bone tiredness you feel when you have pounded your forehead day after day because you cannot believe what is happening to your country or the lengths to which people will go to embellish their resumes for political gain. You want to reach out and grab the pasty-faced political imbecile by his fat cheeks and shake his big head and ask him just who the hell does he think he is! You want to ask him why, knowing the real sacrifice that American Veterans and their families have made, would you pretend to be one of them? Why would you play on their sympathies and the hearts of real Americans by claiming solidarity with these warrior souls? Why? I expect we all know the answer. Sadly, such conduct is so prevalent that speaking out against its perpetrators sometimes has about as much affect as spitting into the ocean. I am approaching bone tiredness on this issue, but we cannot allow even one voice go silent when it comes to condemnation of these charlatans.

You see, politicians learned long ago that military service, especially combat service, Veterans, their families and serving Soldiers all make great political props. Richard Blumenthal is just another example. I suppose some ego-centric people have a need to fill a perceived failure in their lives with such embellishment. Or, their character is so flawed that lying about who they are becomes second nature. Likely, they are trying to expunge their guilt for the extraordinary efforts they made to avoid danger.

What is even more insidious are people like John Kerry. The man started his political career by casting dispersions on Vietnam combat Veterans. None of lies were ever supported with any evidence beyond his fictional Genghis Kahn speech. The military, the war, Veterans of the war, all of that was cast by Kerry in the worst possible light because, for the times, it was the political prop he needed to launch his leftist political career. Years later, when our nation was again at war, he played up his questioned combat service as a great asset. He was a hero, complete with Swift Boat movies tuned up by Spielberg. War was popular again. Veteran’s status was good. He was a thrice wounded combat hero, but not one of those he accused of lopping off ears and razing villages. He needed that honorable combat service, the political prop, to help him become Commander in Chief.

John Murtha was real proud of his challenged service too. When it was politically expedient however, he had no compunction about labeling his Marine Corps brethren as cold blooded murderers. In a commentary I wrote in 2006, drawing on knowledge of Marines I have known, I told Mr. Murtha that I did not think he would amount to a pimple on a real Marine’s butt. I was called out on that by someone claiming to be a Marine. He said I had no right to say that about Murtha since I had never been a Marine. I was forced to apologize for promoting Murtha to the lofty rank of butt pimple.

Serving Soldiers, Veterans, their families, and especially those men and women who have made the ultimate sacrifice deserve our undying gratitude. They do not deserve to be political props.

Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. John 15:13 (NIV)

© 2010