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Hold up! Follow which leader?
Dave Story, Claremore Progress
At the risk of some flag-draped right-winger calling me unpatriotic, I wish at least one of our elected – or wannabe – leaders would stop trying to con the people and tell us the whole truth. The unabridged truth, not the condensed version that includes only the parts we would like to hear.
I have paid close attention to both the Democratic and Republican national conventions. Parts of both were interesting and at times, entertaining.
But after listening to most all the speakers, and especially the two presidential candidates, I have this uneasy feeling that we have been fed a bowl of political pablum. These guys sound like they don’t trust the people to be able to handle bad news.
Come on, guys. Most of us have grown up on bad news. We can handle it, so lay it on straight and thick. Don’t treat us like a teenager heading out for the evening in the family car and being told, "Drive carefully, now."
Has any dude in history ever avoided banging up the family car because his parents told him before he left the house to "be careful no?"
Everyone tries to make us feel better, safer and richer with half-truths. Everyone includes the president, his opponent, the vice president, his opponent, their wives and their daughters.
Well, they have failed.
If I lived in New York City, I wouldn’t feel safe. I’d be terrified, even without the constant possibility of a terrorist attack. It sure wouldn’t make me feel any safer just because Dick Cheney says we have Saddam Hussein in jail and Osama bin Laden on the run. Neither of those guys have been anywhere near the Big Apple.
And I’m sick of hearing about the Vietnam thing. That was over more than 30 years ago. It’s time to forget it.
So George Bush used a little influence to get into the National Guard and skip the Vietnam experience. So what? Thousands did the same thing.
So John Kerry volunteered for duty, faced the enemy, and came home injured and as a hero. So did thousands of others.
One of my best friends died last year. He was a Vietnam vet – a Marine Corps captain and helicopter pilot. He came home with three purple hearts, 41 Air Medals, two Distinguished Flying Crosses, and without most of the bottom half of his leg.
The only thing you could get him to say about his tour in Nam was that he wished he’d gone to Canada with the rest of his buddies.
The most effective speech of the two conventions was made by Col. John McCain. If anyone has the right to mention Vietnam, he does, and he basically said, "get over it."
The war for us to be concerned today is with terrorists. We are fighting a surreptitious and insidious group of insurgents, not a country. This is not what Bush and the boys had in mind when they chose to send our troops into Iraq. We were supposed conquering heroes marching into welcoming arms, but it didn’t turnout that way.
Whoever takes charge of our mess January 20, whether it’s George W. or John F., he’ll be taking on an awesomely heavy load for the next four years, and he’ll have to have the complete backing of the entire country. Not just the left, or the right, or the middle. All of us.
This nation faces immense challenges, and no matter whose fault our mess might be, the challenge faces the collective American people. We have lost almost 1,000 young, heroic troops in Iraq, and that is what should be weighing first and foremost on our minds and in our hearts. Simply blaming those who led us into the mess will not get us out.
Anyone who has ever read a word of my writings knows I lean toward the philosophy of the Democratic party, but I was an American long before I became a Democrat, and my most fervent wish is that every candidate I vote for feels the same way.
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