McCain receives failing grades from veterans organizations
Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
Senator John McCain should not take for granted that veterans will support him in November. His legislative record shows that he has not been a champion for military families and veterans.
Last week, McCain was one of only three senators to miss a vote on a defense appropriation bill that included the Webb-Hagel "G.I. Bill" amendment which provides enhanced education benefits. Had McCain bothered to show up to vote, he would have voted against the Webb-Hagel G.I. Bill which was opposed by the Pentagon on the grounds it was "too expensive" and may encourage service members not to reenlist. President Bush has threatened to veto the bill.
The Senate approved the bill by a veto proof margin of 75-22 (25 Republicans joined every Democrat in voting for the bill). McCain said he supported a watered-down alternative version of the bill.
In opposing the bill, McCain went against virtually every veterans organization, from the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the American Legion to the more partisan VoteVets.org. Senate Passes $165 Billion Measure to Pay for Wars – washingtonpost.com
Former Secretary of the Navy and retiring Senator John Warner (R-VA), a co-sponsor of the bill, was quoted as saying "I have spent many days in the United States Senate, and I don’t know of any days I will cherish more than this one."
During Senate debate on the bill, Senator Barack Obama commented that:
"I respect Senator John McCain’s service to our country. He is one of those heroes of which I speak. But I can’t understand why he would line up behind the president in opposition to this G.I. Bill. I can’t believe why he believes it is too generous to our veterans. I could not disagree with him and the president more on this issue. There are many issues that lend themselves to partisan posturing, but giving our veterans the chance to go to college should not be one of them."
McCain, who has written that his nickname was "McNasty" when he was in school because of his quick temper and tendency to be a schoolyard bully, demonstrated that he has not matured with his advanced age. Rather than answer Obama’s rhetorical question, he quickly fired back – from his more important campaign fund raising event in California – with a vitriolic ad hominem attack press release:
"It is typical, but no less offensive that Senator Obama uses the Senate floor to take cheap shots at an opponent and easy advantage of an issue he has less than zero understanding of. Let me say first in response to Senator Obama, running for President is different than serving as President. The office comes with responsibilities so serious that the occupant can’t always take the politically easy route without hurting the country he is sworn to defend. Unlike Senator Obama, my admiration, respect and deep gratitude for America’s veterans is something more than a convenient campaign pledge.
* * *I take a backseat to no one in my affection, respect and devotion to veterans. And I will not accept from Senator Obama, who did not feel it was his responsibility to serve our country in uniform, any lectures on my regard for those who did.
* * *Perhaps, if Senator Obama would take the time and trouble to understand this issue he would learn to debate an honest disagreement respectfully. But, as he always does, he prefers impugning the motives of his opponent, and exploiting a thoughtful difference of opinion to advance his own ambitions."
Obama later responded to McCain’s ad hominem attack:
"I am proud to stand with Senator Webb and a bipartisan coalition to give our veterans the support and opportunity they deserve. It’s disappointing that Senator McCain and his campaign used this issue to launch yet another lengthy personal, political attack instead of debating an honest policy difference. He should know that this is not about John McCain or Barack Obama — it’s about giving our veterans a real chance to afford four years of college without harming retention. Senator Webb’s bipartisan bill will do this, and the bill that John McCain supports would not. These endless diatribes and schoolyard taunts from the McCain campaign do nothing to advance the debate about what matters to the American people."
McCain’s ad hominem attack exposes a disturbing feature of his character. Whenever his self-righteous sense of honor or integrity or ethics is questioned (if only in his own mind) he responds out of anger, to which many of his Senate colleagues can attest. He falls back on his comfortable tendency to be a schoolyard bully. And whenever his actions are challenged, McCain will pull out his ordeal as a POW like a talisman to ward off any critical or uncomfortable questions that he does not want to answer. It is meant to intimidate anyone who would challenge him into acquiescence or silence. McCain has become far too comfortable with the sycophant news media who fawn over him and who never ask him the critical or uncomfortable question.
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Memorial Day: Remember the fallen, and support our veterans
Posted by: AzBlueMeanie
It is a Memorial Day tradition to recite "In Flanders Fields" in remembrance of those who made the supreme sacrifice in service to their country:
In Flanders Fields by John McCrae, May 1915
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 grow
In Flanders fields.
But let us also remember our veterans and their families. Many veterans have suffered disabling injuries, both physical and psychological, and they deserve our nation’s full support for their service.
Here are two excellent commentaries to consider from Joseph Galloway, a military affairs columnist for the McClatchy News Service, and Bill Moyers, one of our nation’s most respected journalists.
Commentary: How Can We Really Honor Our Veterans
By Joseph L. Galloway, May 22, 2008
Memorial Day is upon us again, and the more traditional towns will be flying flags and hosting parades and holding ceremonies to honor the million American soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines and Coast Guardsmen who’ve fallen in the wars of history and in the wars of today.
It is good to honor the fallen and to comfort the families and friends who mourn one among them whose death broke their hearts.
This year, however, I’ll depart from tradition and ask that we reflect less on our fallen comrades who are at peace, and more on those veterans — especially those from our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — who are alive and need our help.
How strange that today in our country, in a time of war, battles are raging over the need for medical care, educational benefits, employment opportunities and assistance for those who’ve served honorably and come home to begin new lives in a nation they risked their lives to defend.
The shameful thing is that most of those battles are being waged against the very government, the very bureaucracies, the very politicians who sent those young men and women to war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Maybe the right word here isn’t shameful, but criminal.
On Capitol Hill, our lawmakers debate the pros and cons of a new GI Bill that would provide our latest combat veterans with education benefits at least equal to those that their grandfathers received when they came home from winning World War II.
Our president has threatened to veto that bill if Congress passes it. The Republican candidate to succeed him, Sen. John McCain, a veteran and former prisoner of war himself, refuses to support that GI Bill and offers a watered down, cheaper substitute.
The Pentagon and the Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, a former university president, oppose better educational benefits for veterans, for fear that offering them might entice more young troops to leave the service for the campus.
This is odd, coming as it does from a president who talks a lot about supporting our troops, from a senator who draws a 100 percent military disability pension and from a former college president who surely knows the value of higher education.
Others among us wage endless battles and rage against the very agency charged with providing medical care, disability pensions, mental health care and counseling and, yes, the parsimonious educational benefits for all who’ve served and sacrificed for our country — the Veterans Administration (VA).
In recent months, VA officials have been caught providing false statistics that far understate the true number of veterans, old and young, who commit suicide. They’ve ordered doctors to diagnose fewer cases of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and to substitute a diagnosis of a lesser, temporary stress disorder.
The young people marching home from war and trying to rejoin civilian society, get a job and start a life aren’t having much luck, either. The government’s own statistics show that fully a quarter of returning veterans are employed in jobs that pay wages that put them below the poverty line, or less than $21,000 a year if they’re single.
Marine Maj. Gen. (ret.) Matt Caulfield of Oceanside, Calif., knows that the young men and women leaving military service today are the finest he’s ever known in a long career in uniform — yet they’re having a hard time finding good jobs.
"The CEOs and chairmen in industry all say how their companies want to hire veterans," Caulfield told me. "But this is simply not translating downward to the people who do the interviews and make the hiring decisions. A veteran is someone alien to your average corporate hiring manager, who is a 28-year-old woman with a college degree."
Caulfield, a veteran of two combat tours in Vietnam, said that government and industry are both failing miserably in providing job opportunities for this new generation of veterans. He called it a scandal when some of the best and brightest and most motivated of their generation are consigned to jobs flipping burgers or, worse, to the street corners in big cities where they hold up cardboard signs that advertise: "Homeless Veteran — Will Work for Food."
So let’s review the bidding here this Memorial Day.
Let’s all pay lip service to Support Our Troops. But if we want to be honest, we should edit those yellow-ribbon bumper stickers to say Support Our Troops — As Long As It Doesn’t Cost Anything.
Let’s acknowledge that this new generation of soldiers and Marines is amazingly motivated and talented. They’re expected to be good killers, good diplomats and ambassadors of American goodwill who operate under impossibly complex rules of engagement in impossibly dangerous and deadly environments.
But if they come home wounded, their brains rattled by the huge IEDs of the new way of war, and if they suffer the horrors of PTSD nightmares and flashbacks, let’s dump them on the streets with the least amount of help and benefits possible, as cheaply as possible.
For sure we don’t want to improve their chances, better their future prospects, by offering them the same college benefits we gave their grandfathers six decades ago. God help us if they all get college degrees and figure out what we’ve done to them.
McClatchy Washington Bureau | 05/22/2008 | Commentary: How we can really honor our veterans
