{"id":26354,"date":"2011-08-30T16:43:16","date_gmt":"2011-08-30T20:43:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=26354"},"modified":"2011-08-30T16:43:16","modified_gmt":"2011-08-30T20:43:16","slug":"veterans-not-fooled-by-pretty-words","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=26354","title":{"rendered":"Veterans not fooled by pretty words"},"content":{"rendered":"

If the President’s intention was to win veterans’ votes today in his speech to the American Legion Convention, he failed miserably if the opinions I asked for from attendees are at all representative of veterans who heard the speech. The most common response when I asked folks gathered around the ashtrays and in the hallways after the speech what they thought of it was “He said everything we wanted to hear” but they aren’t convinced that the rhetoric matches the President’s intent.<\/p>\n

The New York Times<\/a> called it a “somber speech”, but i think it was more tentative than somber. The applause was polite and the President’s words were carefully chosen and delivered in a very uncomfortable tone. The audience was waiting for the other shoe to drop as the President praised them for their service and commitment. The only enthusiastic applause I heard was when the President praised currently serving troops and renewed his commitment to the wars.<\/p>\n

But Mr Wolf noticed that the President was only committed to “ending” the wars while he carefully avoided a mention of “winning” the war. He’s obviously not as concerned about the legacy he leaves this nation than he is about winning the next election and i guess the people in the room this morning sensed that concern, or rather the lack thereof.<\/p>\n

The Times reports this quote from the President;<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a nation, we\u2019re facing some tough choices as we put our fiscal house in order, but I want to be clear,\u201d Mr. Obama said. \u201cAs a nation, we cannot, we must not and we will not balance the budget on the backs of veterans.\u201d <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Funny, but those are the exact words I’ve used countless times and the sense I got from the various people I talked to, no one believes that. The Defense Department is already planning to jack up our health care costs to reduce government spending. Has anyone recommended that they increase other Federal employees share of their health care premiums? Has Congress decided that they’ll pay more for their health care? Yet no one bats an eye when DoD goes after their former employees. Because we’re getting fat on those health care benefits.<\/p>\n

No, I didn’t talk to anyone was convinced that the President meant much of what he said. But that’s his own fault – if his rhetoric had matched his actions over the last two years, he may have done better.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If the President’s intention was to win veterans’ votes today in his speech to the American … Veterans not fooled by pretty words<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46,84,118],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26354","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-barack-obama","category-military-issues","category-veterans-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26354"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26354\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}