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Octafish

(55,745 posts)
Fri Sep 7, 2012, 06:28 PM Sep 2012

Mitt Romney: Draft Dodger, Chicken Hawk and Warmonger

Something's rotten at the top of the GOP mindset.



Willard Mitt Romney, far right, holding sign reading: "SPEAK OUT DON'T SIT IN"
in a protest supporting the war in Vietnam at Stanford University.

That's a rather hypocritical position to take, considering what he would go on to do...



The Flight of the Young Chicken Hawk

How Mitt Dodged the Draft


by H. BRUCE FRANKLIN
CounterPunch Sept. 7-9, 2012

May 1966. Mitt Romney is just finishing his first—and only—year at Stanford. I’m a 32-year-old ex-Strategic Air Command navigator and intelligence officer, now an associate professor in Stanford’s English Department and something of an anti-Vietnam War activist.

About a quarter of a million young American men are already being abducted each year to fight the rapidly-escalating Vietnam War. Many college students, however, are protected by their 2S student deferments, which blatantly discriminate against all those millions of other young men unable to afford college. As if this privileging of the relatively privileged were not sufficient, an outcry about “inequity” arises from administrations of some elite universities. Since the 2S deferment is contingent on relatively high class rank (meaning, of course, academic class rank), they argue that this unfairly discriminates against some of the “best” students, i. e., all those attending schools like Stanford. A man in the bottom quarter at an elite university might end up being drafted, even though he might be more “intelligent” than a man in the top quarter of some state college.

To address such claims of injustice, the Selective Service was rolling out that month the College Qualification Test, a.k.a. the Selective Service Examination, an “objective” assessment of each test taker’s verbal and mathematical skills, to be used by local draft boards, together with college grades and class rank, to determine who was entitled to that precious 2S deferment and who should be shipped off to Vietnam. But this deferment test actually spotlighted the true inequities of the draft. It also offered an opportunity for direct action against the war itself, right on the college campus.

One of the many myths that have buried the true history of the Vietnam War is that the anti-war movement was motivated by selfish desire, especially among college students, to avoid the draft (a view that conveniently ignores the movement’s throngs of female participants, whose gender automatically exempted them from the draft). Quite to the contrary, students demonstrating against the draft deferment tests were specifically undermining and targeting their own privileges and exemptions, which, as they passionately argued, came at the expense of poor and working class people. At Stanford, a number of people actually disrupted the test. The young men involved thus proved that their goal was not to avoid the draft but to end it, since they had been explicitly warned that their actions would jeopardize their own deferments. When students filed in to take the Selective Service test, other demonstrators handed them the SDS “alternative test” on the history of U.S.-Vietnam relations. About ninety students organized a sit-in in the President’s office. In a manifesto issued from the sit-in they denounced their own privileged status: “We oppose the administration of the Selective Service Examination . . . because it discriminates against those who by virtue of economic deprivation are at a severe disadvantage in taking such a test. . . . (The) less privileged, Negroes, Spanish-Americans, and poor whites, must fight a war in the name of principles such as freedom and equality of opportunity which their own nation has denied them.” “Conscription,” they declared, has throughout American history “invariably been biased in favor of the wealthy and privileged.”

Enter young Mitt Romney, right on cue, waving a sign denouncing the anti-war students. He, like his fellow almost all-male participants in this pro-war demonstration, fervently argued in support of the war and the draft. But not, of course, for himself.

CONTINUED...

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/09/07/how-mitt-dodged-the-draft/



Mitt Romney was OK with others going in his place to kill and die.
If it weren't for Corporate McPravda, I'd find it odd that so few veterans seem to know that.



Mitt Romney, draft dodger, has wide support of military veterans

By DJ Pangburn 102 days ago

It’s rather well-known by now amongst those who care for matters political that Mitt Romney conveniently received a Vietnam War deferment for Mormon missionary work in Paris, France. This detail wouldn’t be so interesting if it were not for Romney’s pro-Vietnam war position activities in 1968, in which he staged a counter-protest to demonstrations against Stanford University’s draft-status tests.

Indeed, if he was so gung-ho about the anti-communist effort in Vietnam, why didn’t he simply bypass the draft and enlist? For Romney, religion was a convenient shelter. He was not ultimately interested in the blood and gore of battle but in the wars launched by men in boardrooms against other companies and, indeed, common people.

So it is with some wonder that a recent poll indicates Romney enjoys wide support from military veterans.

According to a Gallup poll, veterans account for 13% of the U.S. population, though it is mostly comprised of older men. “U.S. veterans… support Mitt Romney over Barack Obama for president by 58% to 34%, while nonveterans give Obama a four-percentage-point edge,” reports Gallup, which added, “Those younger than 50 are roughly as likely to support Romney as are those 60 and older.”

Perhaps the current veteran support for Romney is simply a function of many military folk traditionally voting Republican. The GOP is quite open about a robust defense budget, which signals (at least symbolically) no shortage of work for warriors. However, one is left wondering if the GOP’s penchant for war-making ever enters the veteran thought process. And when one considers the fact that President Obama has hardly cut the defense budget — indeed, he has maintained it — the bafflement only grows.

CONTINUED...

http://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/183724/mitt-romney-draft-dodger-has-wide-support-of-military-veterans/



Hypocrisy is a very solidly conservative value. So's greed. Odd how quick such are to call another person "queer."



Romney’s Defense-Budget Growth Tops Cold War Pace: BGOV Insight

By Rob Levinson and Cameron Leuthy - Aug 29, 2012 4:12 AM ET
Bloomberg

Governor Mitt Romney’s national security policies reflect the Oliver-Twistian mindset of the Republican establishment on defense issues. They want some more. How Romney obliges that impulse illustrates the dilemma of trying to satisfy a military-industrial complex whose business models and profit margins are based on fixed diets.

Candidate Romney has set a goal of a base Pentagon budget that’s equal to 4 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product. That’s about where defense spending will be in the coming year, assuming a decline in spending for the war in Afghanistan. Depending on how the economy behaves during the next four to eight years, a President Romney’s 4 percent solution may prove welcome to the party’s traditional defense hawks yet face real pushback from deficit hawks.

SNIP...

Spending Mismatch

The problem with tying defense spending to economic performance is that GDP fluctuations don’t always line up with changes in threats or military requirements. If the economy is weak and threats are high, more spending might be justified. The opposite -- a strong economy in relative peacetime -- could also be true.

Romney estimates that under his policies GDP will grow by about 4 percent a year, a rate somewhat lower than many forecasts. Still, if the economy grows as he predicts and he gradually ramps up defense spending to his goal of 4 percent of GDP by the end of his first term, the nation would spend about $400 billion more on defense in Romney’s first term than Obama currently plans in his second.

CONTINUED...

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-29/romney-s-defense-budget-growth-tops-cold-war-pace-bgov-insight.html



"We will strengthen our security by building missile defense, restoring our military might, and standing by and strengthening our intelligence officers." -- Willard Mitt Romney

The size of his 401(k) and his various Swiss bank accounts tell me it's not worth asking if Mitt's been brought into the fold.
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Octafish

(55,745 posts)
11. Great article, that...'deferments for those best qualified...'
Fri Sep 7, 2012, 08:01 PM
Sep 2012

..."to continue higher education."

Best qualified must mean in an Operation MONARCH kind of way.

central scrutinizer

(11,617 posts)
3. I doubt if Rmoney has a 401K
Fri Sep 7, 2012, 07:28 PM
Sep 2012

I believe those are only available to working people and are pegged to hourly wages - Rmoney has probably never worked a day in his life

Zoeisright

(8,339 posts)
7. He has an IRA worth $100 million
Fri Sep 7, 2012, 07:45 PM
Sep 2012

Of course, HOW he got it to that size, given that the annual legal contribution limit is $2,000 for pre-tax IRA contributions and 401K at $30,000. That means he'd have to be contributing for 50,000 years.

Raine

(30,540 posts)
4. I'll never understand why chickenhawks get the support of the military. Chickenhawks are
Fri Sep 7, 2012, 07:30 PM
Sep 2012

so disgusting, they're all for war as long as they don't have to go. They make me sick!

 

just1voice

(1,362 posts)
5. Every repuke: Draft Dodger, Chicken Hawk and Warmonger
Fri Sep 7, 2012, 07:40 PM
Sep 2012

All the Bushbot warmonger torturers are the same, they're too elite to fight in the wars they start.

malaise

(267,804 posts)
6. He's a complete scumbag
Fri Sep 7, 2012, 07:43 PM
Sep 2012

He's been one all his life.
All he wants is to prove he's still a rich bully.

Victor_c3

(3,557 posts)
14. It makes me think of the Blak Sabbath song "War Pigs"
Fri Sep 7, 2012, 08:19 PM
Sep 2012

As a combat veteran who dealt with a lot of... well... combat firsthand, I don't understand how anyone who has actually fought in a war could support this guy. This guys talks about the "envy" he has of his peers who actually served in combat operations in Vietnam and his missed opportunities for glory.

Really? There is glory in combat? please explain that one to me. I saw my share of combat in Iraq and I stuffed my share of body bags while I was there too. I had the "honor" of picking up a dead body and having them spill their contents from its stomache and ass all over me. I've looked at the blank eyes and gaping moutgh of a person I shot and a subordinate I lost in the war and I experienced the "privaledge" and "glory" of wathing a young child my platoon shot in combat die before my eyes when I found him in his final moments of life after a firefight in a field. What part of that is glorious? What part of that is supposed to bestoy an unbriddled sense of patriotism over me? I wish he'd explain that one to me and the rest of the military before he sends them in to fight another war in Iraq or Syria like he wishes to do.

Yup, there are a lot of reasons for a combat veteran like me to hold their head up high for :rolleyes: Willard "mitt(ens)" Romney definitely has a lot to be jealous of when he addresses veterans.

Yup. Things like PTSD and the issues broken veterans like me have to deal with becuase of politicians like Romney and W. Bush and their belief that there is glory to be had in war are things that you'd wish you had to deal with. What a piece of shit.

People like Romney are dangerous and unfathomably destructive to the world. He is the problem, not the solution.

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