Reply #17: Buchanan is one of my favorites.

[sofa king]

Well known to be an avid runner today (both physically and Presidentially), Mr. Buchanan reuputedly secured a 4F rating for bad knees.

Tom DeLay has the most revealing excuse: "So many minority youths had volunteered...that there was literally no room for patriotic folks like myself."

Lest you doubt the source of that quote, Wikipedia reports that it was delivered at the 1988 GOP convention. DeLay was apologizing both for himself and for Dan Quayle, who at the time was considered not to have served because he rode out the war in a National Guard unit for sons of influential people. How times have changed.

Those times really have changed.

In 1988, nobody dared point out that a good number of Avenger pilots won posthumous medals for staying with a stricken plane in order to allow their crewmates to bail out. George H. W. Bush received his award for bailing out and leaving his crewmates to die. The circumstances of the incident were considered off-limits and instead the fact that the fellow had served at all was widely admired, whatever the candidate's other flaws.

In 1992, the question of service was important because back then there was concern that a Presidential candidate who had not seen wartime might not understand the solemn import of committing troops to battle.

In 1996, everyone rightly understood that twenty-one days as a combat Lieutenant in Italy was a lifetimes' worth of service, and Bob Dole was lucky to have escaped with permanent disability.

In 2000, Karl Rove successfully stood the concerns of 1992 on their head.

By 2004, the concerns were no longer concerns. They were a reality. By 2004 it had become acceptable to impugn the character of people who had seen combat in order to protect those who hadn't, and that argument was all the more astonishing in light of the fact that the non-combat veteran had in fact started an intractable war with questionable motivation and obvious incompetence.

It would appear that America is smack in the middle of being taught a bloody and expensive lesson, again. If we survive this ordeal, perhaps we can emerge the stronger for it.