Republican Chickenhawks

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.