Don’t you love the way the members of the current administration have with words? How about this amusement from Dana Milbank in this morning’s Washington Post:
President Bush’s secretary of veterans affairs took an unusual foray into politics last week when he suggested that U.S. troops shoot straighter for Republican presidents.
Yeah, they’re shooting straight, alright. Just ask Pat Tillman.
“I think our active military respond better to Republicans because of the ideals we believe in and because of the tremendous support that President Bush and previous Republican presidents provide for our military and our veterans,” Secretary Anthony J. Principi ventured Thursday afternoon in a chat on the Bush campaign’s Web site.
That unorthodox assertion emerged when Principi was asked by Lars Thernstrom of Philadelphia: “Why do you think troops, in general, respond better to Republican as opposed to Democratic leadership?”
It’s no secret that soldiers tend to lean Republican; that is why the Bush campaign was so eager to get the overseas military ballots counted during the Florida recount. But it’s quite another thing to say that the avowedly nonpartisan U.S. military works harder for Republican presidents than for Democratic presidents. Are the men and women of the armed forces more likely to obey Republicans’ orders? Do they fight harder for Republicans? Was Franklin D. Roosevelt just lucky?
Democratic National Committee spokesman Jano Cabrera said it is wrong to say troops “put partisanship before duty.” Phil Budahn, a spokesman for the Department of Veterans Affairs, said Principi “meant they were responding better as voters” — not warriors.
Whatever the meaning, Principi certainly responds well to Bush. “President Bush commands the same stature as men like Lincoln and Churchill,” Principi said in response to another question. “I believe the President’s service in the guard has played into his ability to be a great leader.”
One only wonders how Churchill was able to gain his stature without service in the National Guard.
If I’d been eating lunch, I’d have lost it. The secretary of veterans affairs, who has been presiding over cuts to veterans benefits despite all the rhetoric, has actually compared Bush favorably to Lincoln and Churchill. You know, I don’t recall Lincoln endorsing a constitutional amendment to discriminate against a minority of American people, do you?
I sometimes feel like we are living in some bizarre, unreal world; like a novel come to life, like a sci-fi story. I also sometimes feel that I now know what people in 1930s Germany saw happening around them.
