Reese Schonfeld on Republican War Wimps

From MeandTed.com:

Liberals are accused of NIMBY – Not in My Backyard: School integration, emphatically, but NIMBY; low-income housing, absolutely, but NIMBY; a halfway house, absolutely, but not in my backyard – obvious hypocrisy, all of it.

Conservatives are just as two-faced about “staying the course.” As with Vietnam when this generation of conservative leaders rich boy-ed their way out of the draft (Bush, Cheney, Quayle, never spent a day in that country), conservatives now talk one way and act another.

Everyday conservatives are demanding that the U.S. “stay the course,” demanding that we support our troops and honor our brave men and women, even while they are unwilling to make the least sacrifice to ease the strains on the soldiers and Marines actually doing the fighting. The Pentagon keeps them there on longer and longer tours and rotates them back with less and less R&R. Real support would entail enlisting more men, more reserves to permit an adequate rotation schedule, prevent battle fatigue and leave these heroes victims of their own bravery.

The best way for conservatives to avoid the charge of hypocrisy would be to deliver a son, a daughter, a brother, a sister or some other loved one to the Army or Marines. (The second best way would be to show some political courage and vote for a draft.) Then maybe at last we would have enough troops to fight and win the war.

No one has the right to demand we “stay the course” unless he has one of his own traveling that course with the truly brave men and women who are there now. Otherwise, he is just another N.M.B. – stay the course but “Not with My Boy.”

By the way, the Pentagon is not necessarily honoring our troops when they cut their widows pensions in half. (More on that Monday.)