Progressive Democrat Issue 96: VETERAN'S DAY

Last Saturday was Veteran's Day, a day of particular importance now while we are stuck in a quagmire in Iraq, led there by lies and incompetance by Bush and the Halliburton Republicans at the same time that Bush has cut veteran's benefits. The layers of hypocricy are astonishing!

Michael Boudlin, my fellow contributing edior at Daily Gotham, wrote a good piece about Veteran's Day which I will pass along:

On November 11th, 1918, the Central Powers surrendered to the Allies in a railroad car in the forest of Compiègne in Northern France, marking the end of what was then known as the Great War. Ever since, November 11th has been commemorated by the 1918 allied nations - the UK, France, Canada, the United States, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand – as the occasion of what was clearly understood to be more deliverance than victory.

Veterans Day 2006 finds us not in a war, but in occupation of a foreign country that rather clearly does not want us there. What was supposed to be a war, a 'war on terror', has succumbed to the usual difficulties of making war on a noun rather than a country.

Meanwhile, the men and women of our Armed Forces have been subjected to carnage in a war of occupation, without having been given the tools, such as body armor, to prevail. What they got instead was photo ops, plastic turkeys on a platter held by a smiling draft-dodger. At the same time, the United States government, run by men and women who without exception did not see combat, did not do them the simple honor of executing the occupation the military fought to achieve with anything approaching competence. What we, and they, got instead was an employment program for the hyper-ideological spawn of Washington think tanks, a laboratory experiment for the so-called 'conservative movement'. The first thing ordered by Viceroy Bremer, even before he disbanded the defeated Iraqi army, was the privatization of the Iraqi energy industry. He moved on to impose a flat tax, invite foreign investors, and stand aside as looters ransacked the museums of Iraq. Bremer opened the Iraqi stock exchange before the main hospital in Baghdad had an uninterrupted power supply. Read about it, here and here.

As any normal human being can glean from the headlines and the evening news with its maddening drumbeat of casualties, that conservative experiment has failed. The architects of this disaster have been punished at the polls. A new group of veterans has been elected to Congress, as Democrats.

What remains is this: to explain to the more than 20,000 maimed, and the families of almost 3,000 dead, why their service was required, and why their sacrifice was not treated with more respect by those in power. And yes, honesty and competence should be considered as the bare minimum of respect. As the country commemorates its veterans today, it will be thinking about those who demanded so much sacrifice, and gave in return so little honesty and achievement. Our men and women were sent into combat to prove the theories of the Project for a New American Century and the Heritage Foundation.

Commemorate that.

The impact of the war on those who have to fight it (as opposed to those chickenhawks who sent them there to fight for lies) has led many Veterans to run for office as Democrats. Several of them won or are still in recounts. Here is a list of Veterans who are newly elected as Democrats to Congress (from the DNC website):

IL-17: Phil Hare

Phil Hare joined the United States Army Reserve where he served his country for six years. Simultaneously, he went to work at a clothing factory, where Hare served as President of his union. Hare became Congressman Evans' District Director when Evans was elected, serving in the position for 24 years. After Evans retired, Hare decided to run for Evans' seat when he announced he was retiring.

MN-1: Tim Walz

At the age of seventeen, Tim enlisted in the Army National Guard retiring in 2005 after twenty-four years of service that included overseas duty with his battalion in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. In addition to military service, Tim taught overseas in China for Harvard University and developed a program of cooperation between American and Chinese students through a scholarship funding American students to travel and study in China – a program that continues to this day. Walz also established a small business called Educational Travel Adventures, Inc.

PA-7: Joe Sestak

In January, Navy Vice Admiral Joe Sestak retired after 31 years of service to run for Congress in Pennsylvania's 7th Congressional District against Republican incumbent Curt Weldon. Sestak's impressive resume includes service as the Director of the Navy Quadrennial Defense Review, Director of Defense Policy on the National Security Council staff at the Whie House, and has a Ph.D. in Political Economy and Government from Harvard. Sestak's campaign for Congress burst on to the national scene on successive days in early April. First Sestak announced that his campaign had raised an impressive $420,000 in the first sixty days after kicking off the effort. The next day, his opponent Curt Weldon "tried to score political points on a residency issue" suggesting "to a Washington newspaper that Sestak should have sent his daughter [being treated for a malignant brain tumor] to a hospital in Pennsylvania or Delaware." [Philadelphia Daily News - 4/6/05]

PA-10: Chris Carney

A Lieutenant Commander in the United States Naval Reserve, Chris Carney served multiple tours overseas and was activated for Pperation Enduring Freedom, Noble Eagle, and Southern Watch. After 9/11, Chris served at the Pentagon as an intelligence analyst and senior advisor on intelligence and counterterrorism issues. Chris coordinated counterterrorism activities in the Middle East and later worked on the integration of national-level intelligence products in the effort to destroy international terrorist networks. Chris is currently an Associate Professor at Penn State teaching courses in U.S. Foreign Policy, American Government, and U.S. Security Policy.

VA-Senate: Jim Webb

Jim Webb's illustrious military career began as a cadet at the U.S. Naval Academy. Out of the 841 cadets in Jim's graduating class, only he and seventeen other people chose a commission in the United states Marine Corps. After a tour of duty in Vietnam and serving on the immediate staff of the Secretary of the Navy, Webb moved on to his next achievement, a law degree from Georgetown University. Still dedicated to his life of service, Webb did six years of pro bono work for Marine convicted of a war crime in Vietnam until the conviction was overturned. Ready to face his next challenge, Webb wants to represent the people of Virginia in the U.S. Senate.

Others are in as yet undecided races. Welcome to these new Fighting Dems who are ready to go up against the chickenhawk Republicans of the Bush Administration.

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