Posted on 07/11/2004 5:24:07 PM PDT by bogeybob
Bush vs. Kerry Judging the candidates' strength of character
Sunday, July 11,2004
When I was 21 years old, a college senior in 1969, I participated in my only lottery. I'm not a gambler, but my life was at stake. So were the lives of all American young men born between 1944 and 1950, as our birthdays were picked one by one to determine our order in the military draft. That moment in American history was the hardest test my generation took. Our answers have been judged for the rest of our lives.
My friends made difficult choices. Some quit college and signed up for the Marines. As places in the Reserves rapidly disappeared, one of my classmates joined just before the lottery. His birthday was then picked as number 2. Others who did the same thing got high lottery numbers, and wished they had waited. Men who opposed the war declared themselves conscientious objectors, an arduous test of both character and faith. A few moved to Canada, giving up connections with family and friends to avoid fighting in Vietnam. Some made themselves into targets of government harassment by publicly protesting the war.
I did nothing. I had no idea what I would do if my number was called. My birthday, Aug. 30, was pulled as number 333, and I was safe from the biggest killer of my generation. I discovered something about my own character: I wait to see what comes, rather than making elaborate preparations against the unknown.
I was lucky. I didn't have to cheat on that test in order to pass. Many did. Strong men with football injuries visited friendly doctors to get medical deferments. Others gambled with their health by losing so much weight that they failed the induction physical. I did not believe then that avoiding Vietnam by such means was an immoral act, and I haven't changed my mind. I have learned since then, though, how unfair the draft was - from beginning to end, as children of the middle class like me allowed the children of poor families to go in our places.
In the late stages of the Vietnam War, there were no easy alternatives. We were young and scared. We all had friends who came home in boxes. Our choices still resonate today. If this election is partly about military character, then the Vietnam era choices of our presidential candidates, and what they say about them now, reveal the starkest contrasts between George Bush and John Kerry.
Kerry's Vietnam service is a major element of his political self-promotion. He led men into battle and saved some lives by risking his own. He saw enough of the Vietnam War to convince him that the whole enterprise was wrong for America. When he returned to the United States, he joined with other veterans to do a very unpopular thing: he openly protested the war.
Being an antiwar protester in the early 1970s meant alienating family, losing friends, risking one's career, braving arrest and having one's patriotism questioned. Whatever we think of the correctness of such protest, it meant standing up for one's beliefs. Founding Vietnam Veterans Against the War took courage. Kerry demonstrated military character.
George Bush's Vietnam era activities could not have been more different. Even though he got a lower grade on the qualifying exam than many previous applicants, he was placed by political and family friends into the Texas Air National Guard in 1968, the year of the Tet offensive. That's how affirmative action worked in wartime, putting Bush in the place of another Texan with better military qualifications.
But I don't fault him for that. Many good men used every resource to avoid the scariest fate we could imagine. When my number came up as 333, I was not thinking of my country or of the other man who might have to serve because I didn't. I thought about how happy I was that I had dodged those bullets.
The next chapter of George Bush's life is, in my opinion, the key to his military character. By joining the National Guard, he made a commitment to a job. But while supposedly serving in Texas and Alabama, he disappeared so effectively that nobody can remember him doing anything of significance. Knowing that he was politically untouchable, he abandoned the men he served with. George Bush ignored his military responsibilities, to them and to his country.
Beyond toughness and courage and strength, military character is founded on duty. Although he won't admit it, Bush did not do the military duty for which he had volunteered, for which people had pulled strings, that got him out of Vietnam.
Bush made other choices about what to do in the years after college, 1968-1973. The public discussion of the president's past should focus more attention on those choices. What exactly did George Bush do every day in those years when he served in the Air National Guard? No person has come forward to say that they worked with George Bush on a daily basis, or even that they knew what he was doing. From his years at Yale through his first years in business world, George Bush accomplished little because he attempted little. When the United States was at war, Bush was a privileged goof-off.
Maybe this was the folly and the self-interest of youth. We can forgive people for ethical lapses and personal irresponsibility when they recognize their faults and change their ways. But Bush is not willing to be honest with us about his military service. I would bet that everyone in my generation knows exactly what they were doing in those years of Vietnam and Watergate. Bush pretends to remember very little.
But now Bush has changed his mind. His campaign ads attacking Kerry's patriotism because he protested the war show that Bush would like us to believe that he has military character. George Bush hid from danger as a young man, but now appears in flight gear on the USS Abraham Lincoln because he wants us to see him as a soldier for our country.
I don't know what it means to save a man's life, because I have never seen men killed. I don't know what to think about Kerry throwing away his medals, because I never got a medal. I don't know how much courage it took to ask combat veterans to protest the war in which they had just risked their lives. I do know that all those choices were difficult, and that each defines military character.
When he was young, George Bush shirked his responsibilities. He skipped through Yale and then disappeared for years. He avoided military service from inside the military. Now he continues to shirk his responsibility for a military that he commands. Bush poses in uniform, while his campaign ads attack the patriotism of men who served under fire. In the biggest military command scandal of this generation, at the Abu Ghraib prison, Bush blames "a few American troops who dishonored our country."
When the buck comes near, Bush turns his back.
AWOL's should not dress up as soldiers. War avoiders should not criticize the patriotism of war heroes or resisters. Shirking should not be part of a president's resume. I don't like hypocrites. I can't trust someone who skated through life on his family's influence, and then denies it. My generation faced tough choices. Some died for those choices. Some, like me, got lucky. Some changed their minds about the war, like Kerry. Many still carry their wounds. None of us respect those who went into hiding when things got tough, only to reappear as born-again patriots. That's not military character; that's not presidential character; that's no character at all.
Steve Hochstadt teaches history at Bates College.
Bush's National Guard service was honorable and dangerous. He didn't try to get out of it by exaggerating injuries.
What an audacious pantload of unmitigated crap!
This communist fool needs to spend some time with his nose buried in a dictionary reading . . . and understanding . . . the definition of "Character".
The problem is that he doesn't have the vaguest comprehension of the very thing hew wrote this article about.
Doubtful the 58,000 deaths over all those VN war years qualifies for the biggest killer of his generation.
What a disgraceful person this author is.
Shame
No problem old friend...can you believe we're going into another election in a few months?? Seems like only yesterday the old Prodigy WW board was getting censored again...
This election, this year will be, perhaps, the most important election that this country has had in a century? Not since Lincoln and the onset of the Civil War, do I think this country has been so divided.
The reason for the division is simple. The "politics of personal destruction" that BILL and HILLARY Clinton initiated in their ill-fated eight years in the White House.
Those two have given the left permission to say and do anything they want with NO TRUTH DETECTION by the liberal media. This is the TRUE CLINTON Legacy, the filthy liberals can say anything and get away with it. The Woopie Filth-Fest Fundraiser the other night is PROOF, not a single "media source" has really brought out what was said. The Chicago-Tribune IGNORED IT COMPLETELY!!
God Help USA!!
This guy's so full of shiite, when he wears his peace-necklace, people pull on it to flush the stench.
FMCDH(BITS)
The author of this dribble is chickenshit. He even admits being a coward... and then feels he has the "right" to criticize the commander-in-chief!
Or launching a career as politician and gigolo.
I was thinking of the many times that Grrrrr gave me a smile clear back on the Prodigy Whitewater Bulletin Board. It's been around twelve years since we began having fun at the lefties expense in public. The world has changed. I wish I could say in all ways for the better.
Your assessment of the Clinton legacy is accurate. I was just thinking this morning how sKerry's sKerrier half would contrast with the current wicked witch of the West, if John were elected.
I'd imagine we'll be seeing those stripped socks curl up under the house that lands on her this fall.
To that end friend...
D1
hahahahhahahah
I think Hogswarts needs this guy back.
Interesting. This fellow teaches about the Holocaust. Then he disses the one friend Israel has at this time, Bush. Go figure.
I wonder if he would have supported Hitler too?
Prostitutes and lawyers have been supplanted by journalists and (sadly, an increasing majority of) educators. And, in this case - a combination of the two.
Maine should change the signs which greet visitors to the state. Currently they read: The Way Life Should Be.
Southern Maine in particular has become the California of the east coast and I'm fed up enough that I'll be moving north, soon.
WHO in the heck flees Vienna to go to SHANGHAI??? Maybe they didn't read their ticket closely enough???
G
Professor
207-786-6071
Pettengill Hall, Room 121
I teach modern European history. Just as students may change their major interests during a college career, I have shifted my focus for teaching and research over the 20 years I have been at Bates. I arrived here in 1979 as a social and economic historian of modern Europe, still working on my dissertation about migration in Germany. Just last year that project was finally completed as a book, Mobility and Modernity: Migration in Germany 1820-1989, published by the University of Michigan Press.
Over the past dozen years I have become consumed by a new interest, the history of the Holocaust. I began by giving historical advice to a local group who was interviewing survivors in Maine. I interviewed my grandmother, who had fled from Vienna to Shanghai. These modest beginnings grew into major commitments. I have been on the board of directors of the Holocaust Human Rights Center of Maine since 1993. I have now interviewed over 100 Jews who were refugees to Shanghai, spending the war there under Japanese occupation, but surviving, unlike their relatives who could not leave Europe. To see more go to: bates.edu/Library/aboutladd/departments/special/shanghai.shtml. This is my major research project for the foreseeable future. My teaching has shifted, too, as I now offer a course on the Holocaust every other year.
The freedom to pursue my changing intellectual interests and to communicate them to students are continuing wonders for me as a member of the Bates faculty.
Classes:
Did this guy run the Bates Motel? Another nit-wit...
just get out and vote and have someebody watching the polls
because these are the types that have Civil War veterans voting,,something like they tried to pull in Florida which
Bush won by 27,563 votes....including the military ones
not counted and the ones torn up....they cheated in every
state they won except NoooYok and Calllyy4nia,,,,Jake.
Look at me! I'm a college professor. If I write something, then it automatically must be true. Blah blah blah...
In keeping with an egalitarian tradition pre-dating the Civil War, Bates has helped welcome Somali immigrants to the Lewiston area and has participated readily in efforts to show that hate and prejudice have no haven in this community. In an open letter soliciting ideas and participation, Chaplain Kerry Maloney, Dean of the College James Carignan and Dean of Students Celeste Branham thanked the Bates community for reaffirming the college's commitment to issues of "social justice and respect for the dignity of every person. We will continue to work together to oppose any group or person who aims to incite hatred, bias, violence and division within our community." Related Stories
Jan. 11: Slideshow of Diversity Rally Campus and community responses to hate groups
Bates College Community Information & Action Resource Page
The Many and One Coalition
The second teach-in, titled "The Ideology of Hate: Past and Present," will be offered at 4:15 p.m. Friday, Jan. 10. Professor of History Steve Hochstadt, who teaches about the Holocaust of European Jewry, will explore perspectives of the past. Steve Wessler, director of the Center for the Prevention of Hate Violence, and Kelvin Datcher, outreach coordinator for the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), will discuss contemporary U.S. hate groups.
I wonder how they define "hate groups"?
I wonder if they would support a return to proper immigration policies?
I still have the paperwork from my grandmother coming from England. The ship's doctor had to certify she showed no sign of sickness each day.
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