Maybe it’s because I am a veteran, or maybe it’s because I just feel it’s the right thing to do, but support for our troops is one of the most important political issues to me, right behind foreign policy and the health of the economy. But reading Senator McCain’s remarks directed at Senator Obama over this new bill just makes me absolutely sick.
I don’t think that I am any better than any other red-blooded American because I made a decision to serve my country instead of pursuing other careers. If anything, I feel that those that choose not to serve are the ones that are making a sacrifice because the bottom line is joining the Army was the absolute best decision I ever made and has made an incredibly positive impact on my life. I feel like by not serving you are passing up an incredibly rewarding life experience that you can’t get anywhere else. Even as I write this from the sands of Iraq, away from my wife and two young daughters that I miss deeply, we know that the long-run benefits of military service is more than worth the road traveled to acquire them.
Having said that, military service is not for everyone. It takes a special individual to enlist in the military with the knowledge that you will be sent to war in the immediate future. The physical and mental challenge of serving in a war zone regardless of the type of job you perform is enormous. Today we are asking our young men and women in uniform to selflessly postpone the chase of their own American Dream to risk their lives, day in and day out, for up to 455 days straight. Many who join today for three years will end up serving two tours in Iraq or Afghanistan because they will be stop-lossed before they can get out when that three year commitment initially expires. I see nothing wrong with any service member that chooses to serve their country for as little as one enlistment and decides to pursue other life opportunities once that time has expired—especially today under the conditions that one enlistment incurs. Military service is very honorable regardless of the timing and length of service, but more than ever at a time of war.
I honor anyone that has made this commitment at one point or another in their life. That does not, however, give me or anyone else the right to talk down on anyone that doesn’t choose the same path we took. John McCain is absolutely wrong for degrading Barack Obama strictly on the lines that McCain served and Obama didn’t. There are thousands of ways to serve this great country of ours, and many of McCain’s own Republican colleagues in the Senate chose very different routes than military service. I am personally embarrassed that John McCain would go so far as to say Barack Obama’s passion to support our troops is nothing more than for political convenience. I am deeply sickened that McCain would imply that somehow the only real way to earn the right to support the troops is by having first served yourself. If this is true then the other 90% of the population that never enters the military, including dozens of the 75 Senators that voted in support of this bill, has no right to honor our troops. This, my friends, is an asinine proposition that only serves as smoke to cover the real fact that John McCain didn’t even think it was important enough to show up and vote in order to demonstrate his own personal support for our troops.
John McCain thinks that the American People will accept his argument at face value unchallenged. He thinks that because he has served in uniform he owns the debate on support to our service members. He honestly feels that because Barack Obama chose to show his own patriotism without joining the military that he is somehow superior to Senator Obama.
But the sad truth is that John McCain somehow believes in his mind that he is the ultimate decision-maker on what constitutes real support because he has served. John McCain feels that his sacrifice—while incredibly difficult and nothing short of heroism—is greater than everyone else’s and has provided him the right to NOT support our troops.
The very thought of it makes me sick to my stomach.