Veterans As Democrat Political Footballs

It is patently dishonest for a political party to misrepresent the views of veterans or to malign veterans.

Democrats, since Vietnam, have electorally suffered due to their cut-and-run abandonment of the achievements by our military and Democrats’ association with radicals who maligned veterans’ service.

Democrats do not seem to have learned much from that except to shield their similar undermining today behind false organizational fronts and platitudes of support that ring hollow. The tactic may find acceptance in media friendly toward Democrats, but still falls flat among most Americans.

The Washington Post reported yesterday on the visit to Congress of several veterans opposed to administration policy in Iraq.

When Iraq war veteran Jon Soltz accused Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) of "aiding the enemy," the Democratic senators gathered around him yesterday did not wince. Nor did Democrats object when Soltz, the chairman of a group called VoteVets.org, called President Bush and Vice President Cheney "draft dodgers."

In the United States Congress, where decorum usually holds sway, Soltz and his small band of veterans are saying things many Democrats would like to express but can't. And as the politics heat up over the Iraq war, Democratic leaders increasingly are being drawn to Soltz and his angry soldiers.

Later in the Washington Post report is the vet group’s claim that:

VoteVets.org has 20,000 members, including 1,000 veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, said spokesman Eric Schmeltzer. The PAC is part of a coalition of left-leaning groups organized by Americans United for Change that includes labor unions and liberal groups such as MoveOn.org.

Aside from a self-claimed 1,000 being a miniscule percent of Iraq war veterans, VoteVets.org implausibly seeks to confuse this Leftist affiliation:

Soltz said the group is pro-military and not a front for the Democrats. "I'm a conservative," said Soltz, who volunteered on Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign.

Not coincidentally, VoteVets.org had nothing to say about the outrageous characterization by William Arkin of Iraq veterans as “mercenaries” but did target three Republican Senators in a Superbowl ad to support a resolution to criticize the President’s policy in Iraq.

Moderate electoral analyst Stuart Rothenberg, at his blog Rothenberg Political Report, comments:

If supporters of President George W. Bush's policy of sending another 20,000 troops to Iraq had aired a television ad that argued that opposing the new Bush policy means "you don't support the troops," opponents of the President would have rightly gone bananas….

And yet, those same folks don't seem to mind paying for a VoteVets.org TV spot that says people who support Bush's policy "don't support the troops."…

Someone needs to tell the folks over at VoteVets.org that their ad is just plain wrong and that spending a lot of money to put it on TV doesn't change that.

This isn’t the first time that VoteVets.org has been criticized by liberals or centrists who have any caring for truth. During the 2006 elections, FactCheck.org criticized VoteVets.org’s ad for “nasty tactic – accusing an opponent of playing with the lives of American troops.”

VoteVets.org is the latest incarnation of several Democrat fronts over the past two years that originate in Howard Dean’s “50 state strategy” alliance with Kosites. I wrote about VoteVets.org here, and included links to my prior columns tracing their evolotion.

The Democrats' '06 replay of veterans gambit

Dems Cynical Veterans Politics 2006

“Band of Brothers” Redux

Democrats’ 2006 National Security Strategy

Dem Vets Get No Respect

The results of this Democrat “veterans surge”? Abyssmal. Daniel Glover, in his Beltway Blogroll, showed the 2006 vote results for every so-called “Fighting Dems” candidate.

A few of the anointed candidates dropped out of their races well before the general election, and 18 others were defeated in primaries, suggesting that the party as a whole is not eager to rally around veterans. Most of the other fighting Dems were soundly defeated Tuesday.

Leading Democrats, meanwhile, feel little compunction to restrain themselves from absurd claims about veterans. For example, (video at the link) when Senator McCain reported on his recent visit to Iraq:

that he had talked to soldiers from the ranks of privates up to generals. They all told him that they did not believe you could support the troops and oppose their efforts.
Harry Reid's response was, in effect, that the troops lied to John McCain because they did not want to speak candidly with a war hero/Presidential candidate.

Harry Reid, on the floor of the United State Senate, said the American soldiers in Iraq lied to John McCain.

Veterans will soon have another chance to disprove the Democrat meme, if anyone in the major media will pay attention instead of provide TV time and newspaper ink to Democrat or radicals’ claims.

March 17, 2007, the union of radical Left and pro-Palestinian groups operating as United for Peace and Justice [Correction: A.N.S.W.E.R. is running the show] will assemble in Washington, D.C. to march from the Vietnam Veterans Wall to the Pentagon. Veterans and supporters are contacting each other, as a Gathering of Eagles, (also see here) to peaceably collect around the Wall to prevent protestors from defacing it.

It would really be interesting to see the VetVotes.org people stand with their fellow veterans, for a change.