Republican Cowards: Giuliani and Romney Continue the Bush Chickenhawk Tradition
Well, we already know that Rudy Giuliani screwed New York's firefighters and bears some responsibility for the deaths of so many brave firefighters on 9/11 and the poisoning of many others in the weeks afterwards.
We already know that Mitt Romney is a flip flopping opportunist who openly supports torture.
But both Rudy and Mitt are also chickenhawks in the shameful tradition of Bush, Cheney and the vast majority of hawkish Republicans. McCain, though his record on Veterans issues sucks, is certainly exempt from the "chickenhawk" accusation. But Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani are cowards who evaded service every way they could, but demand that others serve...and are willing to insult real Veterans in the process.
Chickenhawk: A politician whose hawkishness and willingness to put soldiers' lives on the line is matched only by their desperation to avoid military service themselves.
This was covered in Salon.com last week, but only now getting around to covering it.
(image and quote below from Salon.com)
Consider Giuliani...He never hesitates to suggest that politicians with differing opinions simply lack guts. When he spoke at the 2004 Republican convention, he gleefully insinuated that Democratic nominee John Kerry lacked the fortitude to combat terrorism. Now he denigrates the supposedly spineless Democrats running for president in 2008.
But he has always confined his enthusiasm for war to podium speeches and position papers. Born in 1944, young Rudy was highly eligible for military service when he reached his 20s during the Vietnam War. He did not volunteer for combat -- as Kerry did -- and instead found a highly creative way to dodge the draft.
...the desperate Giuliani prevailed upon his boss to write to the draft board, asking them to grant him a fresh deferment and reclassification as an "essential" civilian employee. As the great tabloid columnist Jimmy Breslin noted 20 years later, during the former prosecutor's first campaign for mayor: "Giuliani did not attend the war in Vietnam because federal Judge Lloyd MacMahon [sic] wrote a letter to the draft board in 1969 and got him out. Giuliani was a law clerk for MacMahon, who at the time was hearing Selective Service cases. MacMahon's letter to Giuliani's draft board stated that Giuliani was so necessary as a law clerk that he could not be allowed to get shot at in Vietnam."
...
Like Giuliani and millions of other young American men at the time, Romney started out with student deferments. But he left Stanford after only two semesters in 1966 and would have become eligible for the draft -- except that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in Michigan, his home state, provided him with a fresh deferment as a missionary. According to an excellent investigative series that appeared last month in the Boston Globe, that deferment, which described Romney as a "minister of religion or divinity student," protected him from the draft between July 1966 and February 1969, when he enrolled in Brigham Young University to complete his undergraduate degree...Coincidentally, or possibly not, Mitt's father, George W. Romney, was governor of Michigan at the time.)
...the Mormons didn't send him to proselytize in the slums of the Philippines, Guatemala or Kenya.
They sent him to France.
I will add at this point, that any of our readers who complain about the media but aren't subscribers to Salon.com, should subscribe now. It is really a good, solid source of AP newswire stories and excellent, intelligent columns.
Now, I want to add that I don't necessarily blame Mitt and Rudy for not serving. They are not alone in avoiding serving their nation. But they should NOT have the sleazy gall to accuse others of weakness or disloyalty, particularly those, like John Kerry, who DID volunteer for service. So many Republicans are cowards who want to force others to put their lives on the line in wars of dubious value to America. Two thirds of Americans want us to get out of this useless, ill conceived war based on lies, but Rudy and Mitt want more Americans to die...but they could never face the music themselves.
Disgusting hypocricy. But that is what I have come to expect from most Republicans.
McCain is an extremist who has rolled over for Bush and most directly continues Bush's failed legacy. But at least the man served his nation bravely in war and knows what he is subjecting others to. Giuliani and Romney have no clue what they are sending men into and they don't have the guts that they expect others to have.
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chickenhawks | Republican hypocricy | Barking Crazy Right Wingers | Mitt Romney | Republican Party | Rudy Giuliani
Yuck. . .
Submitted by NanceConfer on 25 July 2007 - 7:32pm.
Now I'm picturing the Cheneys. . . oh, just yuck.
Nance
Yuck is how Cheney looks
Submitted by Margaret Bassett on 25 July 2007 - 9:02pm.
In Wyoming Casper is in the center of the state. It actually sits in kind of a low spot with mountains so that the air tends to sink. I lived north of there. To go to Casper first we drove through Midwest (wide spot in the road with oil pumping)which is famous for Teapot Dome. When I was young you really could see the rock outcropping in the shape of a teapot. Mother would tell us about the big scandal. As the years wore on, so did the top of the teapot and we would comment on that. However, what I always hated about going to Casper (only place to catch a plane in the old days) was the smell. Many times the smell of sulphur was so strong that it was almost unbearable.
Whenever I see Cheney making a speech with that constricting nostril appearance I wonder if he smelled too much refinery air.
Republicans are dollar oriented
Submitted by Margaret Bassett on 26 July 2007 - 9:24pm.
Starting with a definition of money as being congealed energy, it would be enough to drive a Republican crazy. They are big on talking about working hard and also giving back. "Noblesse oblige" is a way of salving for their consciences over making money. I come from the perspective you can't make money unless you work in the Mint. You earn money. And there are many ways to do it. Even those who do not have a paycheck or a business can be said to contribute to the wealth of a family. A victory garden may feed a family while slaving behind a McDonald's window hardly will.
When Bush spent time and the RNC spent a lot of cash to elect Senator Corker of Tennessee, the President stood by him and presented a credential. "This is a man who has made a payroll." When I think of why Tom DeLay became motivated to go to Congress, it was to improve the climate for business. He had an exterminating business and was mad because the government outlawed DDT.
To recall how Mitt Romney's father found himself known well enough to run for president is to recall that he became famous for pulling American Motors out of the jaws of bankruptcy with the Rambler. And now the son is recognized for saving the Olympics in Salt Lake City.
Sadly we have a president who touted his accomplishments as an entrepreneur. I consider he was better at finding friends who could help him. Instant: Ken Lay and the Astros. And then there is the case of Joe Lieberman (and Chris Dodd, possibly, as well as other former Senators from Connecticut), because it is considered pretty much a given that all Connecticut Senators will do whatever to keep insurance out of the reach of federal regulation. I read recently a story where this is the intro (sorry I've lost the URL):
McClatchy Washington Bureau
Posted on Mon, Jul. 23, 2007
Justice Dept. drops massive fraud case
Marisa Taylor | McClatchy Newspapers
The article relates how doctors were left with insurance which proved non-existent when they met with patient claims. It's a part of the reinsurance case Spitzer worked on and doesn't reflect on his work, but something which happened during the time when Warren Buffett was consulted. He was not considered to have been a party to the fraud, but an insurance company was when it didn't live up to rules for reserves. All I could think of was what questions might be coming up to repair our "broken healthcare system."
No reason to lambast all business types who run for president. But here are a couple of thoughts. Do we understand that an MBA is not necessarily the best education for public administration? And was the golden boy of Republicanism thinking about the Boomer generation and the Social Security crisis after he would be long dead, or was he just thinking about the Gipper when he created interest rates in double digit amounts?
I saved this little tidbit for just such an occasion
chatterbox
Elizabeth Cheney, Deferment Baby
How Dick Cheney dodged the Vietnam draft.
By Timothy Noah
Posted Thursday, March 18, 2004, at 5:09 PM ET
"[T]he Senator from Massachusetts has given us ample doubts about his judgment and the attitude he brings to bear on vital issues of national security," Vice President Dick Cheney said during a March 17 visit to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum. He was talking, of course, about John Kerry, the putative Democratic presidential nominee. During the past three years, we've all become better acquainted with Vice President Cheney's judgment and attitude toward national security, which are a good deal more hawkish than Kerry's. A widely observed irony is that the dovish Kerry saw combat in Vietnam while the hawkish Cheney accepted a series of student and family-related draft deferments. Cheney's unself-consciousness about this is (or at least was) so pronounced that in 1989 he told George C. Wilson of the Washington Post, "I had other priorities in the '60s than military service."
What Chatterbox never realized until recently, however, is that Cheney's eldest daughter, Elizabeth Cheney, likely owes her very existence to her father's avoidance of the Vietnam draft.
The Washington Post's Phil McCombs made the intimate calculations in a profile published in April 1991, when Cheney was defense secretary. The timeline:
Aug. 29, 1964: Dick and Lynne Cheney marry.
May 19, 1965: The Selective Service classifies Dick Cheney 1-A, "available immediately for military service."
July 28, 1965: President Lyndon Johnson says draft calls will be doubled.
Oct. 26, 1965: The Selective Service declares that married men without children, who were previously exempted from the draft, will now be called up. Married men with children remain exempt.
Jan. 19, 1966: The Selective Service reclassifies Dick Cheney 3-A, "deferred from military service because service would cause hardship upon his family," because his wife is pregnant with their first child.
July 28, 1966: Elizabeth Cheney is born.
Jan. 30, 1967: Dick Cheney turns 26 and therefore becomes ineligible for the draft.
Dedicated students of obstetrics will observe that Elizabeth Cheney's birth date falls precisely nine months and two days after the Selective Service publicly revoked its policy of not drafting childless husbands. This would seem to indicate that the Cheneys, though doubtless planning to have children sometime, were seized with an untamable passion the moment Dick Cheney became vulnerable to the Vietnam draft. And acted on it. Carpe diem!
Who says government policy can't affect human behavior?
Timothy Noah is a senior writer at Slate.
Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2097365/
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC