GAP said:
The Liberals have no, absolutely none, love for the military. Look at their record. They will paint them black in a heartbeat, if it means getting votes.
GAP,
While this statement can probably be said about Canadian Liberals, I am just curious about your opinion about American Liberals/the US Democrats. Just because one is a liberal does not necessarily mean they hate the military; Senator Kerry was a US Navy veteran on a PBR/Patrol Boat in Vietnam, although a certain group of fellow veterans conducted a smear campaign against him in the 2004 US Presidential election, claiming he didn't actually see action.
Then you have Senator James Webb, who is not only a renowed novelist and former Secretary of the Navy, but he served an US Marine Corps officer during the Vietnam War; in fact, he was said to be so respected by the Corps that his novel
Fields of Fire is said to be recommended as required reading prior for any Marine Officer candidate who goes through OCS/TBS.
Then you have Congressman Murtha- a Marine Corps officer and a retired Colonel at that! Just because he and Webb oppose the War in Iraq does not necessarily mean he hates the military. They just want to ensure that the govt. is steering their nation and military that protects that nation toward what they see as the best course of action, which does not repeat what they see as the "mistakes of Vietnam", while still continuining the War on Terror.
Then you have Generals Shalikashvilli and Wesley Clarke- the former appeared at the last Democratic National Convention in 2004 and Wesley Clarke tried running in the Democratic Primaries back in 2004, though he only carried the State of Oklahoma.
My only point is that just because one is a liberal does not necessarily mean they hate the military; on the other hand, to assume that all Conservatives love the military is also a generalization. It is a logical fallacy called "post hoc ergo procter hoc"- or to assume that a result is always true just because of the preceding premise.
Let me take this generalization that US/Canadian liberals "hate" the military and cross-examine it a little. Two of the most distinguished US Presidents were LIBERALS. One is US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, whom some of you may even blame for the Depression, but then again it was his "Socialist" New Deal programs which helped all these Americans who were hard on the luck find a way to get back on their feet; one should even be thankful for FDR's New Deal programs, since they prevented the United States from collapsing into a Communist Revolution and all these welfare/socialist programs gave these new poor the impression that the govt. was doing something.
How can one say that FDR hated the military? He may have gutted the Army to the point that the US Army was as large as that of Portugal by the time of Hitler's 1939 invasion of Poland, but look at what he did with the Navy, especially since he was a former Secretary of the Navy himself. While all the world's navies were restricted by the 1922 Washington Naval Treaty, the United States continued in its development of aircraft carriers from the giant USS
Saratoga and
Lexington in the early 1930s to the
Yorktown class. By the time of the expiration of the Washington Naval Treaty in 1939, his administration knew that the United States would be involved in a war- whether in Europe or the Pacific- and embarked in a massive shipbuilding campaign that gradually built the giant armada of carriers, battleships, cruisers, escort carriers and Liberty ships which helped the US and Allied Navies defeat the Japanese in the Pacific as well as Hitler's U-boat threat. By his death in 1945, the US Navy had exceeded the British Royal Navy as the world's powerful Navy and had been an instrument in the victories in the Island-hopping wars of the Pacific as well as helping deliver the Allied armies to the fight to Fotress Europe. NOW DOES THIS SOUND LIKE THE AVERAGE "MILITARY-HATING" DEMOCRAT TO YOU?
Would someone who hates the military have the started the massive shipbuilding campaign that he did and LED the US throughout most of World War II ? I think not. Would someone who hates the military take his wife and his dog Fala on a cruise aboard a US Navy cruiser during the 1930s (which alternated between the USS Houston and Augusta). Would someone who hates the military have used the US Navy in "Neutrality Patrols" for Allied Convoys for Lend-Lease equipment through the Atlantic BEFORE PEARL HARBOR, when the US was still neutral? (And please I don't have any patience for conspiracy theories that FDR intentionally ordered the US Pacific Fleet to Pearl Harbor to provoke Japan into attacking them).
Then you have US President John F. Kennedy- a Navy Veteran himself whose PT boat was sliced in two by a Japanese Destroyer in World War II. He's Democrat and a Catholic. Now, will someone who is a Democrat have STOOD UP against the Soviet Union and faced down Krushchev during the Cuban Missile Crisis? Would a man who hates the militay have used the US Navy in the blockade of Cuba as he did to show his decisiveness?? Or continued funding for General Le May's pet B-52 bombers?
It's ironic that today Democrats are often not differentiated from Communists when one of the most distinguished US Democrats helped prevent Communism from spreading!
Now many of you are probably going to say that the US Democrats then are different from the US Democrats now because there was a supposed change/reversal in their ideology starting with the 1960s. I don't think so. Many of these US Democrats believe in universalized Health care, welfare for the poor, nation-building missions such as those in "Haiti, Bosnia, etc", yadda, yadda, yaddda. FDR's New Deal demonstrates he is pretty much "socialist" by the way some of you define the term, and so was LBJ by his own futile attempt to make a universalized health care system in his time; and both were either before or during that supposed ideology change of the 1960s. The Democrats of today, such as Kerry and Obama recently, have stated (at least have given lip service), that the US should form a universal health care system. I say the core beliefs of the two parties remain essentially the same, though the proliferation of Civil Rights have changed the demographics of both parties.
But of course, most average pro-military Americans will probably forget FDR, JFK, LBJ simply because most of them were either too young to remember them or hadn't been born by then. All that will come to recent memory is Reagan's own pro-military administration, which saw him revitalize the military with programs such as a "600 ship Navy" to help counter the "Soviet Bear"; many of the US officer corps and higher NCOs of the US military today were still either young lieutenants or newly enlisted privates/airmen/seamen during the Reagan administration. The fact that Reagan helped rebuild the US military especially after the humiliations of Vietnam and the Carter administration/the failed Iran hostage rescue mission forever endeared THEM to the Republicans from Bush (Senior) to "Dubya" Bush.
My only point in regurgitating all this history is to emphasize that NOT ALL LIBERALS HATE THE MILITARY and that is an UNFAIR MISCONCEPTION to assume that they all do, solely because our own Liberals have gutted the CF in all those years they were in power. Our Liberals are closer in ideology to their Democrats, and (surprise, surprise), their Conservatives/Republicans are closer in ideology to our own current Conservative party (Harper's "Blue Tories", as opposed to the older "Red Tories" who were very progressive and actually were pro-welfare, and wanted closer ties to the British Empire/Commonwealth.) I say it's only a matter of time before we have a Liberal Party that does not repeat the mistakes of their predecessors who see the military (as well as dependents and veterans) as more of a target than a constituency in its own right, who should not be ignored.
