The Military Is More Liberal Than You Think
Here is a direct quotation from a column written by Maureen Dowd in the New York Times on July 23: "Asked by a Democratic lawmaker a while back why there weren't more democrats in the military, General Petraeus smiled slyly and said 'there are more than you think.'"
Now go to Colonel Steven Boylan of the General's public affairs office in Baghdad who said of the quotation that it is "in error, as he never made nor never would make such a statement."
Well, I certainly believe that Petraeus did not want to make such a statement given that it is inappropriate that a military officer make any partisan comment at all. But it does bring up an interesting question : Is the military more liberal than the clichés would have you believe?
The answer is "yes" and the reason that Obama will win the active duty vote this November.
Most people with whom I talk, often quite educated, think the military is made up of knife-between-the-teeth grunts, uneducated robots without any kind of free will whatsoever -- people who goose step to Republican philosophy and particularly the Bush cowboy mentality.
It is true that in the recent past most members of the military have voted Republican. This is because the GOP is far more likely to flood the military with cash and thus make the lives of the service member bit easier. However, I believe any sort of polling will show, on an issue-by-issue basis, that the military is mostly made up of people with a liberal mindset. And that is what Petraeus was talking about.
Let's take a look at the most ardent post-military political leaders in our nation today. Who are they?
John McCain -- Vietnam vet, former prisoner of war -- is a Republican. Robert Dole is a World War II hero. George Bush, the elder, is a World War II hero.
But now look at the rest of congress. The former military that serve in the House and Senate are mostly Democrats
Here are the political leaders with military experience who have taken prominent positions on defense issues. They are:
Wesley Clark - Democrat.
Jimmy Carter - Democrat.
John Kerry - Democrat.
Bob Kerrey - Democrat (winner of medal of Honor)
Max Cleland - Democrat.
John Murtha - Democrat.
Jack Reed - Democrat.
Daniel Inouye - Democrat. (winner of Medal of Honor)
Jim Webb - Democrat.
Charles Rangel - Democrat.
Al Gore- Democrat
Why do so many members of the military who decide on continuing in public service join the Democratic Party? There are several answers to this, here are a few:
1) Forty percent of the military is made up of ethnic minorities. Most of those, as is also the case with most of the Caucasian members of the Army, Navy, and Air Force, come from the lower economic classes. These demographic groups have largely voted Democrat in the past and will continue to do so. When officers (the more likely to go into politics) live with their soldiers day in and day out, a certain empathy builds. It is unavoidable. Those officers begin to understand and respect the problems their soldiers and their families face or have faced on a day-to-day basis. Indeed, the primary reason that young men and women join the service is not their fetish for combat or killing but to satisfy the dire economic needs of their family.
2) The United States military is probably the most socialistic institution in the United States. Think about it. There is universal health care in the military (though we have seen how unconscionably horrific our medical attention has been to our soldiers in places like Walter Reed). Housing is available to all members of the military. Educationally, the children of the officers, even the Generals, go to a school with the children of the lowliest Private in the army.
The major institutions that produce our most elite officers come from a position of absolute meritoriousness as opposed to wealth or contacts. Right now Annapolis and West Point are two of the nation's most difficult colleges to get into. Those two schools, as well as the Air Force Academy and the Coast Guard Academy, are blatantly transparent in who and how they admit because they are federally funded. The students who are accepted have to come from the highest academic stock. Were a qualified high school student to be be rejected in favor of somebody because of that person's family's wealth or political connections, it would create a gigantic scandal, given that it is Congressmen who nominate (though do not appoint) cadets and midshipmen.
Just for myself to be transparent myself, I graduated from West Point in 1984.
3) Former soldiers will almost always gravitate to the anti-war party. This happens for obvious reasons. The men who have been in battle tend not to romanticize it and tend not to take it flippantly. The reasons for going to war need to be extraordinarily convincing before anybody who has taken a bullet, seen their friends take a bullet, or who has lodged a bullet in the enemy's brain will put their support behind a war. Recent history has shown that the Republicans are more likely to use the military as a tool of policy rather than as a tool of defense. That is unacceptable to anybody who has served.
4) Finally, and maybe most importantly, is the Iraq war itself. The Bush administration sent our soldiers in on a mission that was initiated either by a lie or by the greatest act of incompetence in the history of this nation's intelligence gathering. In battle, our soldiers were ill equipped and not properly supported. (The "surge" was needed because Bush didn't send in enough troops to begin with). Our wounded soldiers have returned him to find inadequate medical care. The "love" that the soldiers felt from Republicans in peacetime turned into neglect and apathy during war.
The latest poll from Military Times shows that less than half of the military identify themselves as Republicans. The poll goes on to show that much of this anti-Republicanism comes from the bungling of the Iraq war.
As of the start of the year, only 35% of military personnel approve of the president's handling of the war, and 75% said the military is "stretched too thin to be effective."
A few weeks ago I was in Las Vegas playing blackjack. Two soldiers who were a couple of days away from being re-deployed to Iraq sat at the table with me. After a few minutes of conversation I asked them whom they were voting for. They both said they were voting for Obama (these two guys were white). When I asked them why, they very simply and honestly told me they want to vote for the guy that will get them out of Iraq.
I think this year we will see, for the first time, the active duty military voting for the Democratic candidate.
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Who can respect the U.S. military any more? It has become a paranoid, bullying, thuggish political institution.
It's not the military, it's the people Colin Powell referred to as "Those f*cking crazies at the Pentagon".
Can you point to the people being bullied by thuggish military behavior? I can probably give you sound rebuttals for any arguments you can make!
Semper fi
"obama will win the active duty vote this November"
You don't have a few bucks you want to wager on that statement do you? I have been in the Army for 32 years and I hope I get to live and serve until the military votes Democratic because I will live to be a very old man. The military will vote Democratic right after all the chickens vote for Col. Sanders.
They'll never get it. They take a handful of military Democrats, and think they can parlay that into a pro-suicide military, willing to vote for the guy that will cut their guts out. Go figure.
Semper fi
Okay, we GET that you love guns and wars and survival of the fittest and all that stuff. But even so, how did it feel for someone like you who has actually put your caboose on the line that everyone pushing for war; Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Rice, Limbaugh, Hannity, Coulter, etc. etc. had exactly NO combat experience? Did you just assume that they knew what they were doing?
Funny if you look back at actual history instead of talking points put out by propagandist, you'd see who has your back. It ant the right. The left has ask for more for you guys than and been shot down more times by the right than vice versa. You want to see how much your service means to the right look at how they vote against veteran bills, vote against anything that will actually help troops on the ground but vote for every hair brined shinny new billion dollar gizmo their big business buddies are trying to con the government with.
We go to war with the army we have not the one we want to have is what they tell the troops while their corporate buddies who can't even keep showers up to code or water treatment plants running are making billions the troops are being electrocuted in the shower and drinking contaminated water. The guys and gals in Iraq would be better off bathing in and drinking from the Tigress River.
Our country spends more on our military than the whole world combined and we don’t have the military we want, BS we have exactly the military the right wants, one that can make their buddies billions. Wake up and smell the rip off, the right’s only support for the troops last about as long as this whole countries memory and is as short as its attention span.
Well, Paul, this may be your lucky year. Although dollars do not necessarily equal votes, it's interesting that, so far in this campaign, Obama has received many more dollars in campaign contributions than McCain has from people listing their employment as U. S. military service.
One can get a sense of this by looking at those flaming radical publications like www.armyti
Armytimes ran a very interesting several part article a while back on one company and how repeated deployments etc destroyed morale. Upon reading it, one might have thought it was from The Nation or Counterpunch.
I think Jim Webb (D-VA) has his finger on the pulse of America and our military on this. I just read "Born Fighting" which describes the heritage of the Scots-Irish, who established the core of American belief in honorable, individualistic, anti-aristocracy values. I was a borderline hippie, but with "Scotch-Irish" (as we termed it in pre-PC days) roots. I recommend this book highly, as a window into what makes Red-State America and the US Military tick. I hope that the excesses of the Bush era are rejected in this election. I hope the military voters are part of that.
Check out Deer Hunting with Jesus by Joe Bageant for more on this subject.
One additional reason that the military is 'liberal" or has the perception of liberalism is because it mirrors, in many ways, the civilian control it is under. The military is under civilian control and reposability rather than professional military officers.
To paraphrase political scientist Samuel Huntington:
"Civilian control [of the military] is often seen as a prerequisite feature of a stable, liberal democracy; use of the term in scholarly analyses tends to take place in the context of a Western democracy governed by elected officials, though the subordination of the military to political control is not unique to these societies: One example is the People's Republic of China. Mao Zedong stated that "Our principle is that the Party commands the gun, and the gun must never be allowed to command the Party," reflecting the primacy of the Communist Party of China"
In contrast to civilian control, professional militaries, say in Latin America, will create what are known as "states of exception.
The checks and balances of the US government allow it control of the military while also balancing the national and personal interests of its personnel.
There is
Here, close to Ft. Lewis, hard to find a current or former service person whoever supported Bush.
At least not one who will admit it in public.
This is an excellent overview of the military mind and how the soldiers may vote. Just don't ever say that the soldiers have fought a meaningless war. They have lost their limbs, their minds, their lives, their buddies and often their families because this Administration, with the support of Congress, have determined that Iraq needed to be invaded and a democracy needed to be implanted.
Our soldiers have given everything they know to fight this war. No one can ever say they didn't do the best they knew how to deliver our country's message to the world--Don't f***k with us!!! If you do, you will have to accept the consequences.
We must honor and accept our soldiers and others who went to war to support the policies of our government. They didn't flinch! They didn't ask why!!! They followed their Commander in Chief and their Leades. They have won this horrible war against people who did not bomb our Twin Towers or Pentagon. Iraq was not the breeding ground for the terrorists until we decided they were part of the "Evil Empire."
When ever you see a soldier or marine, thank them for doing everything and more that has been asked of them by our politicians. Thank them for being brave warriors and for "staying the course."
I usually just apologise to them. They should never have had to risk everything just to make W feel like a big boy.
Don't apologize. They are men and women, not children. And, they swear an oath to support and defend the constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. The Constitution, not the President.
Excellent post.
I dont see how any American military person could support a Marxist.
And who exactly are you referring to as a Marxist?
They don't know what Marxism is. Since Obama probably *does* know what Marxism is, I think they think that means he's a Marxist.
I wasn't aware we had any Marxist politicians in the U.S. Only Bernie Sanders comes halfway close to one, but he's merely a Socialist.
You know we're 8.5 years into the 21st century, don't you?
You wouldn't know a real Marxist if one whacked you over the head with his copy of the Manifesto.
Marx was a crtic of capitalism. He didn't write about socialism or advocate a specific system, he pointed out the flaws in captialism. So just about every single person who supports any type of regulation or worker's rights is in support of a Marxist idea. Republicans support Marxist ideas, and Democrats do too, to an extent. But that doesn't make a single one of them an actual Marxist. Just the same as it wouldn't make somebody who supports giving money to Indian Health Service, the VA, public education, or even shoring up Social Security, a socialist. Likely you don't even know what a Marxist is and you just thought it would be a cool thing to say. It's not, it made you look stupid.
We join the Democrats because reality and fairness has a "liberal" look to it. Only the old "lifers" try to convert everyone else to their conservative views thru coercion of "those dam libs hate the troops" or under duress of politically withheld promotions which become a military cultural litmus test. But if they get out with their youth and commonsense intact, best believe they'll become "libruls".
I'd be careful with those broad brush generalizations. I spent 32 years in the green machine, and I'm a lifelong liberal Democrat.
So was I. You should be in the Guinness Book of World Records while being a Dem for that long in the Marines. Semper Fi
easy now... I'm at 17yrs on 11AUG08 and identify myself as a progressive liberal. Always have. What's more, I've always tried to set a good example to seniors, peers and subordinates alike of how professional "soldiering" and the espousement of liberal ideals are not mutually exclusive and in fact, have helped me to become a more effective leader (on the NCO side....).
That's true. But it's the Officer Corps that tries to push the Republican mantra on junior officers. It's almost cultish at times with any dissenters being ostracized with possibly lower fitness reports or other underhanded means.
The military is not, as has been said on a couple of occasions, a "socialistic" system. It is one of the few things actually designated to the Federal Government by the Constitution, as opposed to the actual socialist systems of Social Security, Medicare, etc. Housing is, most emphatically, NOT available to every military member, which is why the military pays housing allowances to help its members afford off-base housing. Health care and retirements are contractual obligations between the Federal government and members of the Armed Forces, which negates the idea that they are socialist schemes.
It is true, very true, that the services are a cross section of the population. However, most tend to be very conservative, though perhaps not politically so. They believe that people need to take responsibility for their own actions, which is not a Liberal belief. They also believe that actions have consequences and that people should suffer the consequences for bad decisions. Again, this is not a generally Liberal belief.
Lastly, officers tend to be more in the Democrat camp than enlisted. Why? I don't know, but my opinion is that they pick it up in college. Not from an educational standpoint, though I would not swear to it, but from their experiences with their acquaintances, where dissent from the Liberal line is not easily accepted.
Semper fi
So officers in the military, after experiencing the tough training and conformist culture of the military, are in fact still brainwashed by their college experience, which is probably the most free environment they've experienced as young men?
The tough training and conformist culture of which you speak is not one in which individual thought is discouraged. Critical thought is encouraged, which most Liberals do not know, because critical thought is crucial to military success.
Semper fi
I think you need a dictionary. Something being Socialistic has nothing to do with being in the Constitution. Also the Constitution was a very Liberal document for its time. The men who drafted it were all Liberals. Heck, you could say the Bill of Rights is liberal for this time given the parts of it that have been trampled by the current administration.
I'm afraid you've been watching too much Fox News and are buying into their definitions of who people are and what they believe. I'm consider myself a liberal (by the dictionary definition below) who is also a big fan of personal responsibility and accepting consequences. I could natter on about the current Administration being completely unable to accept any responsibility for anything they do but most everyone knows that already.
From American Heritage Dictionary:
liberal:
Not limited to or by established, traditional, orthodox, or authoritarian attitudes, views, or dogmas; free from bigotry.
socialistic:
Of, advocating, or tending toward socialism.
socialism:
Any of various theories or systems of social organization in which the means of producing and distributing goods is owned collectively or by a centralized government that often plans and controls the economy.
As you read, I used the Capital L and S for my terms. Using the dictionary, I too am a liberal. But I am a diehard Conservative (Capital C).
Semper fi
I think you need a dictionary. Something being Socialistic has nothing to do with being in the Constitution. Also the Constitution was a very Liberal document for its time. The men who drafted it were all Liberals. Heck, you could say the Bill of Rights is liberal for this time given the parts of it that have been trampled by the current administration. I'm afraid you've been watching too much Fox News and are buying into their definitions of who people are and what they believe. I'm consider myself a liberal (by the dictionary definition below) who is also a big fan of personal responsibility and accepting consequences. I could natter on about the current Administration being completely unable to accept any responsibility for anything they do but most everyone knows that already.
From American Heritage Dictionary:
liberal:
Not limited to or by established, traditional, orthodox, or authoritarian attitudes, views, or dogmas; free from bigotry.
socialistic:
Of, advocating, or tending toward socialism.
socialism:
Any of various theories or systems of social organization in which the means of producing and distributing goods is owned collectively or by a centralized government that often plans and controls the economy.
"They believe that people need to take responsibility for their own actions, which is not a Liberal belief."
That is a bald-faced lie.
The difference between a liberal and a conservative is that a liberal believes in human progress, with the government an occasional guarantor, and a conservative believes in the powerful retaining their power (whether deserved or not) and stopping any progress that they can.
Sorry, if you envision the government as a guarantor, you're a Socialist at best, Marxist at worst. And Conservatives believe that everyone will act in his or her own best interests if their is no guarantor to protect them from the consequences of bad choices. The best will rise and the worst will fall. I don't mind that rationale!
Semper fi
If you want to be technical, the US Air Force is NOT designated by the Constitution. The Constitution specifically mentions only an Army and Navy.
Very good! The Air Force is an offshoot of the Army, based on needs, while the Marine Corps is an offshoot of the Navy, for the same reason.
Semper fi
I am a physician who is employed as a civilian doctor in the DoD.
I found this article quite interesting.
I think it could start a good productive dialogue
So -I'd like to hear from you
Thanks
Dr. Rick Lippin
aol.comn@aol.com
They do have socialized medicine in the military..
"This is because the GOP is far more likely to flood the military with cash and thus make the lives of the service member bit easier."
Says who?
I've been in since 1982 and I think improvements were more noticeable in the Clinton years.
Thank you for sharing your perspective. It's an important reminder not to make generalizations with respect to any group. It seems a common mistake when civilians discuss political preferences among the military.
Given the incompetent, deceitful leadership emanating from the highest office of our land for the past 7+ years and the enormous impact it's had on our military personnel, I suspect many have taken a keen interest in the upcoming election.
It's all a PLOT to infiltrate the NeoCom Democratic party with the goal of driving it out of existence. The presence of intelligent, experienced and patriotic people who know history should have been a red flag. You people are SO gullible!!
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