FROM THE MOUTHS OF REAL WARRIORS...

You said it, chums:

"Looks like he used his daddy's pull to avoid the draft, then was derelict in his duty, and to top it all off, he even failed to show up for 5 months--AWOL from light, non-lethal, even fun, duty hotrodding around in a supersonic Jet wearing a sexy flightsuit (his official "report card" says he was not rateable because he was never around!!! ). Take it from someone (me) who has written nearly 50 of these reports, those are the words you use when rating a scofflaw). Black kids and Hispanic kids didn't get this kind of favor during Vietnam, and many white kids, too.

GWB's performance of his patriotic duty is a spit in the eye of America. For his shirking of his duty they shoulda court-martialed his ass or shipped him off to fight as an infantry grunt hauling the M60 machinegun or a mortar baseplate on the frontlines deep in the dark, hot, steamy, deadly jungles of the SE Asia theater, like they would have done to any black kid who was lucky enough to avoid combat by joining the National Guard and then going AWOL .

Thats what would have happened if I was in charge. That AWOL yellow-bellied coward sure talks tough talk, but he can't and didn't walk the walk. And my bet is that he woulda never made it anyhow. He probably would have cowered sniveling in his foxhole like most trash-talkers do. He woulda been a perfect candidate for what back then was known as "fragging!"

Bush and his spineless cronies (including that other never-served Karl Rove) got NO business talking about John Kerry's service or Kerry's valor under fire or Kerry's wounds of war. Or anybody's service in war for that matter. And that other yella-bellied draft-dodger, Cheney, with his unprecedented 5 military deferments, got no room either. In my book, both of them Cheney and Bush, are chickenhearted, yellow-bellied, silver-spoon-in-their-mouths, DRAFT-DODGERS, no better than those yellow-bellies who slinked off to Canada...Shameless trash-talking cowards, the both of them!
And how dare they get up on their bully pulpits and preachify about their PATRIOTISM and war records. They ran and sought refuge in the alternative to combat when called upon. Neither one is a Warrior. They ain't been, didn't go and don't know nothing about that stuff. They are just WARMONGERS who got no personal stake in the matter. For those folks with no stake in the matter, it's easy to talk all that tough nonsense. Those kinda folks with no personal stake are the most dangerous and reckless. And I find no merit in someone important going around saying things like "Bring it On" and posing in a flight suit goading on our enemies in war when we got solid Americans, boys and girls, over there doing their duty and getting seriously wounded or dying by the numbers. Nor do I find merit in our leadership camouflaging the horror of innocent civilian deaths by invoking the sterile impersonal phrase that "there is certain to be 'collateral damage'." What utter bullshit and it is no excuse. (Courtesy of The Smirking Chimp)

A generation has passed, and approximately the same amount of time separates Iraq from Vietnam as separated Vietnam from Munich. Those two precedents define the paradox of intervention. Munich will forever exemplify the consequences of appeasement, but Vietnam serves as a reminder of the dangers of over-commitment.

Curiously, however, now that it has ascended to power, the generation that lived through Vietnam no longer seems to be influenced by it. President Bill Clinton was initially cautious about using military force. But by the end of his presidency he had initiated war in the Balkans. President Bush has been even more emphatic about the need to use military force. "In the new world we have entered," he argued in the September 2002 National Security Strategy, "the only path to peace and security is the path of action."

Yet for all his talk about sacrifice, Bush never served in Vietnam. He spent the war flying National Guard aircraft over Texas. "I am angry that so many of the sons of the powerful and well placed ... managed to wangle slots in Reserve and National Guard units," Secretary of State Colin Powell wrote in his memoirs. "Of the many tragedies of Vietnam, this raw class discrimination strikes me as the most damaging to the ideal that all Americans are created equal and owe equal allegiance to their country." (Hat tip to Cato.)