Bush's 'military service'

[Other News - Roberto Savio / IPS <soros@topica.email-publisher.com>]

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 From Guardsman...
    By Richard Cohen
    Washington Post

    During the Vietnam War, I was what filmmaker Michael Moore would call a
"deserter." Along with President Bush and countless other young men, I
joined the National Guard, did my six months of active duty (basic
training, etc.) and then returned to my home unit, where I eventually
dropped from sight. In the end, just like President Bush, I got an
honorable discharge. But unlike President Bush, I have just told the truth
about my service. He hasn't.

    At least I don't think so. Nothing about Bush during that period -- not
his drinking, not his partying -- suggests that he was a consistently
conscientious member of the Texas or Alabama Air National Guard. As it
happens, there are no records to show that Bush reported for duty during
the summer and fall of 1972. Nonetheless, Bush insists he was where he was
supposed to be -- "Otherwise I wouldn't have been honorably discharged,"
Bush told Tim Russert. Please, sir, don't make me laugh.

    It is sort of amazing that every four or eight years, Vietnam -- that
long-ago war -- rears up from seemingly nowhere and comes to figure in the
national political debate. In 1988 Dan Quayle had to answer for his
National Guard service. In 1992 Bill Clinton had to grapple with the
question of how he avoided the Vietnam-era draft. Now George Bush, who
faced this question the last time out, has to face it again. The reason is
that this time he is likely to compete against a genuine war hero. John
Kerry did not duck the war.

    But George Bush did. He did so by joining the National Guard. Bush now
wants to drape the Vietnam-era Guard with the bloodied flag of today's
Iraq-serving Guard -- "I wouldn't denigrate service to the Guard," Bush
warned during his interview with Russert -- but the fact remained that back
then the Guard was where you went if you did not want to fight. That was
the case with me. I opposed the war in Vietnam and had no desire to fight
it. Bush, on the other hand, says he supported the war -- as long, it
seems, as someone else fought it.

    It hardly matters what Bush did or did not do back in 1972. He is not
the man now he was then -- that by his own admission. In the same way, it
did not matter that Clinton ducked the draft, because, really, just about
everyone I knew at the time was doing something similar. All that really
matters is how one accounts for what one did. Do you tell the truth (which
Clinton did not)? Or do you do what I think Bush has been doing, which is
making his National Guard service into something it was not? In his case,
it was a rich kid's way around the draft.

    In my case, it was something similar -- although (darn!) I was not
rich. I was, though, lucky enough to get into a National Guard unit in the
nick of time, about a day before I was drafted. I did my basic and advanced
training (combat engineer) and returned to my unit. I was supposed to
attend weekly drills and summer camp, but I found them inconvenient. I
"moved" to California and then "moved" back to New York, establishing a
confusing paper trail that led, really, nowhere. For two years or so, I
played a perfectly legal form of hooky. To show you what a mess the Guard
was at the time, I even got paid for all the meetings I missed.

    In the end, I wound up in the Army Reserve. I was assigned to units for
which I had no training -- tank repairman, for instance. In some units, we
sat around with nothing to do and in one we took turns delivering antiwar
lectures. The National Guard and the Reserves were something of a joke.
Everyone knew it. Books have been written about it. Maybe things changed
dramatically by 1972, two years after I got my discharge, but I kind of
doubt it.

    I have no shame about my service, but I know it for what it was --
hardly the Charge of the Light Brigade. When Bush attempts to drape the
flag of today's Guard over the one he was in so long ago, when he warns his
critics to remember that "there are a lot of really fine people who have
served in the National Guard and who are serving in the National Guard
today in Iraq," then he is doing now what he was doing then: hiding behind
the ones who were really doing the fighting. It's about time he grew up.


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"Other News" is a personal initiative seeking to provide information that
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"Other News" motto is a phrase which appeared on the wall of
Barcelona’s old Customs Office, at the beginning of 2003:”What
walls utter, media keeps silent”. Roberto Savio

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