Horseshoes and Hand Grenades

"I graduated in 1979. The Vietnam War had come to an end. We weren’t engaged in an active military conflict at that point. And so, it’s not an option that I ever decided to pursue." - Barack Obama on why the U.S. military had no need for his soldiering services.

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In my life thus far, I've been fortunate enough to have visited four of the seven continents. I've been to well over 20 countries and over half the United States. I've sipped sake' with Japanese workaholics, and pounded ale with polished German and British executives. I've known seasoned sailors and Marines, farmers, well-drillers and have associated with people from every conceivable background. I grew up on the streets of Los Angeles before it became a Third-World extension of Mexico because of an invasion of illegal aliens. I lived through earthquakes, mudslides, riots, firestorms and heat waves along with a representative sampling of every conceivable type of human being on Earth. I thought I had seen just about everything by the age of 25. But every now and then, I read or hear something uttered by a candidate for national office that is so patently absurd, I simply can't believe it.  While the mainstream media restricts stories that are detrimental to their candidate-of-choice to blogs and other locations besides prime-time, front-page news, when taken together, all of these isolated stories act as the individual pixels that form the bitmap image of a candidate's worldview. In other words, their ideology or more precisely, the ideology that would shape their term as President. That is why Barack Obama's campaign and his supporters portray any attack on his character as a petty partisan attack that is out-of-bounds. That is why they fight so hard to remove them from the political discourse. By far the worst offender has been NBC. Their coverage of the 2008 election has been so blatantly biased in favor of Barack Obama that they've faced barrages of criticism and were forced to replace both Chris Matthews and ObamaNazi herr Keith Olbermann with David Gregory because of their uncontrollable outbursts. Presidential candidates say lots of absurd things to get elected for sure. As Americans, we've become jaded and expect that sort of nonsense from our leadership. So when they lie through their teeth it comes as no big surprise. But when they lie about the very things that make up their basic belief systems and tell lies about things they say they  have done that fly in the face of those belief systems, they cannot be trusted. It's one thing to suggest that you may have attended a particular school, obtained a certain degree, or held a particular position when you didn't. It's quite another when you attempt to steal even an ounce of valor from over 20 million U.S. veterans who have earned it through their sacrifices, deaths and bloodshed. While both are lies told with the specific intent of bolstering one's qualifications to advance their career, lying about military service is simply stealing the valor from those who actually did such heroic things. And while Obama is not exactly lying about military service by claiming to have thought about enlisting, he's trying to increase his standing among veterans by --laughably-- claiming he was (almost) one of us. Every time Barack Obama opens his mouth to veterans, indeed every time his lips have parted to speak in front of the nation's patriots, he has lied. He clearly lied about his grandfather's service during WWII and now he's doing it again, this time engaging in flights of fancy about his desire to serve in the military, but his ultimate decision not to. In his recent interview with ABC's George Stephanopolous, Barack Obama said, with respect to his decision not to enlist in the military:

"I had to sign up for selective service when I graduated from High School. I actually always thought of the military as an ennobling and you know, honorable option. I graduated in 1979. The Vietnam War had come to an end. We weren’t engaged in an active military conflict at that point. And so, it’s not an option that I ever decided to pursue."

Obama has the unique distinction of being the only politician who has penned multiple memoirs despite having virtually no legislative record in Washington. The audacity is not of Obama's hope that he can change the country, rather the audacity here is that this candidate can look veterans in the eye and expect us to believe what he said was true. First of all, every male child in the United States who reaches the age of majority (eighteen) has to register for Selective Service. When I did so in the mid 1980's, as with Obama in 1979, there was no draft, nor threat of one. Nor was there any weighty decision to make as Obama wants you to believe. For me, Selective Service registration was no big deal, merely a duty I had to fulfill. When I registered, I just drove down to the post office, filled out the form and that was it. I never told a soul what I had done and never felt compelled to do so. I did not actually join the military for another four years after that.  Selective Service has absolutely no bearing on a person's desire to serve their country. People don't usually trot that one out for discussion unless they are doing so for reasons that are personal rather than patriotic. Secondly, the U.S. has been involved in multiple conflicts during Obama's fighting years. The first Gulf War was a worthy cause, supported by the United Nations and dozens of countries and he was only 30 at the time. If fighting is what he wanted to do, there was plenty of it during those years, but Columbia and Harvard Law school are a bit more lucrative than sleeping in a ditch and eating M.R.Es. For Obama to expect veterans to believe that his decision not to serve in the military was in any way connected to the fact that he wouldn't actually see any combat and not because he had his eye on any political office is an insult to every man and woman who has worn the uniform. Those of us who have served respect the decision of those who choose not to. We served so the citizens of this nation could be free to choose their own destiny. The fact that Obama feels the need to justify his decision at all reeks of dishonesty. The fact that he is embellishing upon those reasons is unforgivable. In his incorrigible quest to woo the nation's veterans, Barack Obama has managed yet again to insult us. There is simply no way one could believe the preposterous notion that he ever seriously considered military service. I can just imagine the young Obama's reaction the first time a drill instructor yelled at him at point blank range, showering him with spit and insults. His upbringing, education and formative years were so completely removed from the rigors of military service it is simply not possible. He refuses to acknowledge to this day that U.S. military forces led by General David Petraeus were directly responsible for the recent string of successes or the real force reductions that have and will continue to occur due to those successes. He has disrespected the very flag that leads our military into battle on multiple occasions. When you examine the actions of Barack Obama with respect to the military, once again his record does not square with what he says. Mr. Obama, we who served our nation and wore the uniform with pride and distinction have a saying:"Almost only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades." Give it up, will you?