Nation-Building

One of the strategies of the conservative right has been to try and politicize the military. The confuse their own military fetish and partisan self-interest with genuine patriotism and the public good (because in their view, they hold a monopoly on both). In so doing, they disrespect the very troops they allegedly revere. For example, the Bush Administration paid great lip-service to veterans on the field but left them hanging out to dry when they got home . Now, the right is taking their insult to the military to new levels, by promoting this video which allegedly shows that the military does not respect Obama the way they did Bush: At Redstate.com, the bloggers crow that this is the "Semper Fi Zone" which is about as gross an insult to the professional ethics of the Marine Corps as you can imagine. In the fevered imaginings of the conservative right, a military that shows a preference for one political party over another is actually a desirable thing, instead of the ...

On Meet the Press, Dean was off by 7% on his off-the-cuff guess as to the size of the armed forces. The resulting media elite chatter about Dean's foreign policy experience and supposed " hostility to the military " has been unceasing. But it's not the media elite that Dean needs to address - it's the military itself. And nowhere has Bush's hypocrisy and empty rhetoric - and outright betrayal - been more evident than the issue of supporting our troops. via Billmon , from the 2nd Presidential Debate (Oct. 11, 2000): It's time to have a new commander in chief who will rebuild the military, pay our men and women more and make sure they're housed better, and have a focused mission for our military. Rebuild the military? Under President Bush, the military that Clinton built has been stretched far thinner on imperial adventurism than it ever was under Clinton. Nicholas Confessore's essential article in the Washington Monthly, GI Woe , details exactly h...