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Politics : The Obama - Clinton Disaster -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Wayners who wrote (73097)	5/29/2012 9:29:00 PM
From: Hope Praytochange	1 Recommendation Respond to of 103300

MSNBC Lets Anti-Military Cat Out Of The Bag Valor: The vast majority of Americans understand that those who don the uniform of the United States to protect us are heroes. But an MSNBC pundit, even in "apologizing" for an outrageous statement, doesn't. MSNBC's Chris Hayes let something slip on-air over the Memorial Day weekend that countless others on the left reserve for times when they know the little red light on the TV camera is off — perhaps over some good Maui Wowie with all the windows rolled up in the Choomwagon. "Thinking and observing Memorial Day that will be happening tomorrow," Hayes said in a now viral video, "I think it's interesting because it is, I think, very difficult to talk about the war dead and the fallen without invoking valor, without invoking the word 'heroes,' and why do I feel so uncomfortable about the word 'hero'?" According to Hayes, "I feel uncomfortable about the word 'hero' because it seems to me that it is so rhetorically proximate to justifications for more war." Hayes concluded, grinning, that "it seems to me that we marshal this word in a way that is problematic, but maybe I'm wrong about that." Maybe? Beginning with the Clinton era, Democratic Party leaders have shrewdly embraced a more-patriotic-than-thou attitude. Hippie mobs taunting, cursing and spitting at returning servicemen and women may have been fashionable during the Vietnam War, but Democratic politicians seeking to be elected into power to weaken our defenses know it's counterproductive. Once in a while, however, the truth comes out. The most infamous example was MoveOn.org's "General Betray Us" advertisement in the New York Times in 2007, in which current CIA Director David Petraeus, a real hero, was accused of being "constantly at war with the facts" and "cooking the books" for the Bush White House as commander of the successful Iraq surge. Even the lefty MSNBC could not have kept Hayes on staff without an apology, so it arrived almost instantaneously. But how much of an apology was it? Hayes is "deeply sorry" because "I don't think I lived up to the standards of rigor, respect and empathy for those affected by the issues we discuss that I've set for myself." While he admitted "it's very easy for me, a TV host, to opine about the people who fight our wars, having never dodged a bullet or guarded a post or walked a mile in their boots," he added "that is true of the overwhelming majority of our nation's citizens as a whole." He raised the issue of "just how removed most Americans are from the wars we fight," that they do "not ask questions about the direction of our strategy in Afghanistan," and that Americans "assuage our own collective guilt about this disconnect with a pro-forma ritual that we observe briefly before returning to our barbecues." According to Hayes, "in seeking to discuss the civilian-military divide and the social distance between those who fight and those who don't, I ended up reinforcing it, conforming to a stereotype of a removed pundit whose views are not anchored in the very real and very wrenching experience of this long decade of war." In fact, the outrage over Hayes' disgraceful remark, MoveOn's insults to one of America's greatest commanders, and the anti-military rabble's behavior towards our heroes during the Vietnam War is the opposite of what Hayes and his ilk contend. There is no "civilian-military divide." The "social distance" is between leftists like Hayes and the heroes who defend us.