Tuesday, March 09, 2004
A Vicious War By Proxy
The UK Telegraph reports that Sen. Kerry himself sought a deferment of his military service so he could study in Paris.
Senator John Kerry, the presumed Democratic presidential candidate who is trading on his Vietnam war record to campaign against President George W Bush, tried to defer his military service for a year, according to a newly rediscovered article in a Harvard University newspaper.
In his case, the request for the deferment was denied.
I wouldn't make too much of the carping over his purple hearts mentioned at the end of the article. A lot of wounded are returned to duty within a day, and some of our purple hearts here are controversial, too. "What!?!?! He got a purple heart for THAT?!?!?!?! A sliver?!!?"
A purple heart doesn't neccessarily mean a lengthy convalescence and doesn't automatically mean a missing limb. Generally, if you catch a frag and it breaks the skin, you can qualify (Hey, you gotta draw the line somewhere--and breaking the skin is as good a line as any). We've also given them out for busted eardrums. Hearing loss is insufficient--the doc has to verify a busted eardrum. (155mm shell IEDs will do that).
But it is interesting that Kerry DID seek a deferment.
I have no problem with that, in and of itself. Perhaps he just wanted to brush up on his French before arriving in Indochina.
But it seems to me that the moral difference between Kerry and, say, Cheney, on this matter, is that Cheney's deferral was approved and Kerry's was not.
Which is to say, there's no moral difference at all.
Though one would think that after decades of public life, both Bush and Kerry would have track records supporting far more relevant and productive lines of argument.
One would think.
In thirty years, I hope I would be a lot more than the sum of my own increasingly irrelevant military service.
The endless carping and hairsplitting over the comparative merits of two aging honorably discharged officers is juvenile. It's a bunch of snot-nosed kids shooting spitballs at each other. And their parents are tacitly condoning it.
Splash, out
Jason
Senator John Kerry, the presumed Democratic presidential candidate who is trading on his Vietnam war record to campaign against President George W Bush, tried to defer his military service for a year, according to a newly rediscovered article in a Harvard University newspaper.
In his case, the request for the deferment was denied.
I wouldn't make too much of the carping over his purple hearts mentioned at the end of the article. A lot of wounded are returned to duty within a day, and some of our purple hearts here are controversial, too. "What!?!?! He got a purple heart for THAT?!?!?!?! A sliver?!!?"
A purple heart doesn't neccessarily mean a lengthy convalescence and doesn't automatically mean a missing limb. Generally, if you catch a frag and it breaks the skin, you can qualify (Hey, you gotta draw the line somewhere--and breaking the skin is as good a line as any). We've also given them out for busted eardrums. Hearing loss is insufficient--the doc has to verify a busted eardrum. (155mm shell IEDs will do that).
But it is interesting that Kerry DID seek a deferment.
I have no problem with that, in and of itself. Perhaps he just wanted to brush up on his French before arriving in Indochina.
But it seems to me that the moral difference between Kerry and, say, Cheney, on this matter, is that Cheney's deferral was approved and Kerry's was not.
Which is to say, there's no moral difference at all.
Though one would think that after decades of public life, both Bush and Kerry would have track records supporting far more relevant and productive lines of argument.
One would think.
In thirty years, I hope I would be a lot more than the sum of my own increasingly irrelevant military service.
The endless carping and hairsplitting over the comparative merits of two aging honorably discharged officers is juvenile. It's a bunch of snot-nosed kids shooting spitballs at each other. And their parents are tacitly condoning it.
Splash, out
Jason
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