{"id":32438,"date":"2012-10-17T09:48:28","date_gmt":"2012-10-17T13:48:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=32438"},"modified":"2012-10-17T10:44:13","modified_gmt":"2012-10-17T14:44:13","slug":"where-are-veterans-issues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=32438","title":{"rendered":"Where are veterans’ issues?"},"content":{"rendered":"

OK, I’ve been sitting here for a couple of hours listening to the media tell me what was important about the debate last night. No one has mentioned that veterans and national security have been noticeably absent from all of the debates so far this year. In a link sent to us by Chief Tango, the Daily Beast<\/a> notices it, too.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s why: 68 percent of Americans think the war in Afghanistan is going somewhat or very badly, and the same percentage thinks we should withdraw entirely or start drawing down troops now. Compound that with less than 1 percent of Americans serving in the active-duty military, so much of the nation feels no real stake in or connection to the war effort. That disconnect and distance helps explain how, at this time of collapsing support for the government, the press, and other institutions, three of four Americans say they\u2019ve maintained their confidence in the military.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The only thing we’ve heard from this administration in regards to Afghanistan was in the vice-presidential debate from Joe Biden as he gave the Taliban his personal guarantee that no matter how well, or poorly, the war is going in Afghanistan, we’re out of there by 2014.<\/p>\n

I did notice that last night President Obama asked the governor “How are you different from George Bush?” I think Romney missed an opportunity by not asking Obama the same question, since most of what Obama has done that could be put in the “successful” column was hold over policy from the Bush Administration – things like the hunt for bin Laden, keeping Guantanamo open, the military tribunals, and re-certifying the PATRIOT Act. The things Obama did that were to change Bush policies were failures and Obama could have listed them for Romney’s next campaign commercial.<\/p>\n

Obama is most vulnerable on national security and the way he’s fought the Afghanistan War. Yeah, you can continue to beat Obama over the head with the Benghazi consulate thing, but it’s really just a symptom of how disingenuous this administration have been with Americans on national security. <\/p>\n

The word I’m getting from folks in Afghanistan is that if this administration was forthcoming on how many attempted blue on green attacks there have been this year, Americans would be outraged. The attacks that have been reported resulted in deaths, but I’m told they’re only the tip of the iceberg compared to the number that resulted in wounds or were thwarted. By hiding these attempts from the public, the administration was able to call them “negligible” for the first eight months of this year. But the sheer volume of the attempts would have alerted us to the problem before it became a problem.<\/p>\n

This administration has consistently been unable to call terrorist attacks terrorist attacks. From the jihadist who murdered a soldier at a recruiting station in Little Rock to Nidal Hasan’s attack on fellow soldiers at Fort Hood. Even the underwear bomber. This administration couldn’t admit that we were under attack in our own country by terrorists. So why is everyone so surprised that they couldn’t admit the truth about Benghazi?<\/p>\n

And the green-on-blue attacks are a direct result of the Obama Administration’s failures in Afghanistan. They half-assed “surged” in 2009 contrary to the needs the commanders said they needed. The CIA and the generals correctly predicted that fully staffing the surge would not have a long term impact in Afghanistan and we’re seeing that prediction come to fruition now.<\/p>\n

And while we’re complaining about Romney, I haven’t heard a word from that campaign in regards to Obama’s promise to the 2011 American Legion Convention that he wouldn’t balance the budget on the backs of veterans while his Secretary of Defense was planning to do exactly that. Despite the fact that Congress told the DoD that they wouldn’t hike Tricare fees, DoD has hiked Tricare fees just in case.<\/p>\n

This president is more vulnerable on veterans’ and national security issues than anything else, including the Obamacare bill and economy because it doesn’t take charts, graphs and wonkish blather to explain how poorly they’ve performed in regards to the issues. So why is the Romney campaign so averse to the discussion?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

OK, I’ve been sitting here for a couple of hours listening to the media tell me … Where are veterans’ issues?<\/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":[186,46,207,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2012-election","category-barack-obama","category-mitt-romneypaul-ryan","category-terror-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32438","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=32438"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32438\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}