Young Obama Wanted to Join Army, Hunt Moose
By Scott Ott on Vietnam
(2008-09-07) — Sen. Barack Obama told ABC’s George Stephanopolous on Sunday that he considered joining the military when he left high school in 1979, but declined when he learned that the Vietnam War had ended some four years earlier, and that the first Persian Gulf War wouldn’t start for another 11 years.
Sen. Obama’s opponent, Sen. John McCain was shot down, captured, and repeatedly tortured in Vietnam during more than five years as a prisoner of war, much of that in solitary confinement.
The Democrat presidential nominee, in a surprising revelation not mentioned in either of his two memoirs, said, “I actually always thought of the military as an ennobling and, you know, honorable option, but since we weren’t at war, I thought, why bother getting ennobled if you can’t run through a hail of hot lead, or charge up a hill with a bayonet between your clenched teeth and plant Old Glory on the summit?”
The Illinois Democrat said he realized even in high school that peace-time military service “wouldn’t make a big difference on the resume” so he decided to become a community organizer in poor neighborhoods of Chicago, which at the time, was the closest he could get to Vietnam.
Sen. Obama told Mr. Stephanopolous that he had also considered being an Alaskan commercial fisherman and moose hunter, like Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, because “I liked the idea of being a bold, adventurer on the American frontier, killing my own food and surviving the harsh elements.”
Instead, young Mr. Obama decided to pursue a law degree, because it was “as close as I could get to having bloody entrails on my hands.” |
