Reply #28: Obama's anti-war rhetoric in comparison with McGovern's anti-war rhetoric [View All]

[Straight Shooter]

Barack Obama doesn't have a leg to stand on when it comes to the issue of our military and protecting the interests of the United States. He's just a talking head like anyone who has never served. No matter how passionate or informed you are, unless you've worn the uniform, the words have a certain hollowness. (Last week I listened for half an hour while a Marine explained to me how he, his father, his two brothers, his sister, and his son all served as Marines, from Korea, to Vietnam, to the first Gulf War.)

Regardless of his position on the Iraq War, Barack Obama has no capital, no more credibility than any other person on the street who has never served in the military. Barack Obama never volunteered to join any branch of the Armed Forces. He's 46 years old, thereabouts. So he could have joined approximately 1980 or 1981, when he was still young and strong, with no wife and no children, and his odds of ending up in harm's way were very slim. What exactly was Barack Obama doing in 1980? He was at Columbia University in New York, pursuing a degree in political science.

Now, about McGovern ...

Increasingly, Barack Obama’s campaign is starting to resemble the George McGovern campaign of 1972 which was the most disastrous one in modern U. S. politics.

McGovern’s race was a contrived total left-wing excursion, serenaded by the liberal media and fanned to a fair-thee-well by all the usual left-wing suspects. But it was not pre-ordained from the outset that McGovern would lose…especially on the national security issue. . Indeed, to start out with, McGovern had far more going for him than Obama. The real McGovern story is solid TV documentary fare. A high school gym teacher once called him a coward because he trembled before vaulting a gymnastic horse and never really leapt over it. Disgusted with himself because he really and truly felt he was a coward in failing to jump over the horse and terribly afraid of heights, he gritted his teeth and signed up for a civilian pilot training program. You can imagine how dizzy and woozy he felt as he was learning to fly. When he soloed, he felt cold sweat rolling down his back. But when he walked away after that solo, having won his certificate he was never afraid of heights again.

When World War II came he volunteered for what was then the U.S. Army Air Forces. He served as a B-24 Liberator bomber pilot with the 15th Air Force and flew 35 missions over enemy territory from bases in North Africa and Italy, piloting the craft through rains of artillery fire. When his plane was hit, he skillfully maneuvered it to a successful crash landing on a tiny Mediterranean island and saved his crew, winning the Distinguished Flying Cross and the eternal admiration of his crew.

With his military background, McGovern could have had great credibility challenging the Vietnam war. Gene McCarthy who opposed the war had no military service whatsoever; thus his appreciation of the military was severely limited. Hubert Humphrey who supported the war likewise had no military experience so his defense of the war was not very convincing. Only McGovern could make the case that some wars are necessary and others are not. But McGovern flunked the test. Why? Because he was hearkening back to Bobby Kennedy’s 1968 race and thought Bobby was where the country was. Not so. Bobby was a charismatic character who would have shown the world how he could switch back to the old Bobby who was Joe McCarthy’s second-tier aide.

More at link, this guy is a conservative but he knows his way around the block.

http://tomroeser.com/sectionlist.asp?s=&month=3&year=2008