Are we bringing slavery back dressed in a military uniform?
Republicans vote to NOT support the troops.
If anyone needed a reason to vote Democrat in '08, this was it.
Support Our Troops. Yep, pretty much everyone agrees that these brave men and women have been serving under strain .. and doing so without much complaint, even though it's costing them their lives, limbs and sometimes their families. Some are on their 4th tour.
So here comes Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA) who introduced an amendment to *truly* support our troops and their families, joined by Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE). Both of these guys are veterans and they want to legislate the long standing military tradition of giving the military the same time at home as they spend deployed.
Next, here comes the Republicans, led by Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and Sen. John Warner (R-VA), to shoot the amendment down. Warner supported Webb in July, but now has reversed himself.
This is choosing politics over protecting our troops .. it's choosing to protect a president and his failed policies over our men and women in uniform.
The Republicans even said this legislation was "blatantly unconstitutional" .. McCain said the Constitution doesn't give Congress the right to manage troop rotations.
Webb said McCain "needs to read the Constitution. There's a provision in Article 1 Section 8 which clearly gives the Congress the authority to make rules with respect to the governance of ground and naval forces."
It’s a shame when our own lawmakers are this unfamiliar with our US Constitution.
Then Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said it would "tie the hands of our military commanders to deploy forces..."
Seems that they are more concerned about tying the hands of military commanders than they are about ensuring the well-being of the soldiers on the ground.
And guess what? Webb’s proposal is supported by the Military Officers Association of America. Here's their letter of endorsement:
"On behalf of the 368,000 I am writing to express MOAA's support for your amendment that would support our military men and women by establishing standards for dwell time between consecutive operational deployments.
Even before September 11, 2001, our military leaders indicated that members and families of all services were stretched thin in meeting deployments requirements. The subsequent exponential growth of operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, compounded by reluctance to grow our forces to meet requirements of an acknowledged "long war," has placed extreme stress on active duty, Guard and Reserve forces alike.
MOAA is very concerned that steps must be taken to protect our most precious military asset - the all-volunteer force - from having to bear such a disproportionate share of national wartime sacrifice. If we are not better stewards of our troops and their families in the future than we have been in the recent past, MOAA believes strongly that we will be putting the all-volunteer force at unacceptable risk."
We've been calling up the National Guard and Army Reserve for deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001 .. hundreds of thousands of our citizen soldiers (the majority of them, I believe) have already served there. Earlier this year, the military announced that Guard units would rotate to Iraq for a 2nd time .. VIOLATING the "one year on, 5 years off" policy for Guard unit deployments.
Webb and Hagel held a news conference saying they'll reintroduce their amendment to the Defense Authorization Bill.
I guarantee this vote against doing right by our troops will come back to haunt Republicans in Nov 08 .. they're basically telling the troops to just suck it up and get with Bush's program.
And keep this in mind next time you hear a wingnut ranting about how Democrats don't "support the troops."
The American people know. A recent USA Today/Gallup poll shows that 59 percent of us want a timetable for troop withdrawal, one that must be followed no matter what. A recent CBS News poll shows that only 31 percent of us think the “surge” has made things better.
Yep, Republicans will be in big trouble next November. Meanwhile, our troops are in big trouble now.
