Bernie Sanders Applied for 'Conscientious Objector' Status During Vietnam: Campaign Confirms

[HassleCat]

60. Be careful with the "logic" of that commander in chief talk

We had George W. Bush, who wanted desperately to be a "wartime president" to make up for the fact he was not a veteran. What? Not a veteran? What the hell you talking about, HassleCat?

A veteran is someone who serves 181 days or more on active duty, not for training purposes. Bush 43 does not qualify. He is not a veteran of the United States military. He also walked away from the last few months of his National Guard obligation, indicating he didn't take his military duties very seriously when he was younger.

So we have this president who pretended to be in the military to avoid Vietnam, and couldn't even hang around to finish his cushy gig, and he starts a huge, disastrous war by sending his Secretary of State on TV to lie to the public. We would have been far better off with a conscientious objector, someone who gave at least a little consideration to the morality of war, and who might not have been so insecure about his manhood he felt compelled to start a bogus war and kill half a million people in a small, defenseless nation, while killing 5k of own people and racking up a multi-trillion dollar debt.

So, no. There is no logic to this hawkish tendency to demand a veteran president, or suggest a CO will not rise to the defense of the United States when the moment comes. It's just blabbering from a military that loves war. When we had citizen soldiers, and we got them involved in Vietnam for ten years, the nation didn't like it because they perceived we would be drafting their grandkids if we didn't put a stop to it. So we professionalized the military, but they want to practice their profession, which consist of breaking things and killing people, as Mike Huckabee repeated so many times. A successful career in the professional military depends on serving in combat, and combat requires warfare. The military does not like the lull between wars, something many of us call "peace."

The military depends on politicians to send them to war. Toward this end, they encourage hawkish patriotism, which includes denigrating pacifists. I will be disappointed, but not surprised, to see Democratic candidates fall into this trap.