On Sunday my brother and I went over to Mom and Dad’s to have dinner before our weekly pen-and-paper RPG session. While waiting for dinner to finish cooking, I opened the local fishwrap’s editorial section to find this calumny staring me in the face:
Not seeing eye-to-eye with Obama
Ever notice how President Barack Obama exits Marine One? He walks three or four feet past the Marine saluting him before returning the salute. What’s he saluting — his own ego? It’s not the Marine who guards the White House.
It’s customary to hold a salute until one is given back. Must the Marine turn his eyeballs 90 degrees to see if one was given?
Oh, Obama will bow to a Muslim king but not salute a defender of the nation. The man continues to disgrace this country and the true Americans who serve it.
[REDACTED] Ross
Captain, USMC (ret.)
Before I say my piece, Captain Ross, I want to thank you for your service to your country. Far be it from me — a mere civilian whose closest brush with military service was the Air Force JROTC unit at my high school — to dress down someone who likely risked life and limb for his country. Nevertheless, I feel it needs to be said…
ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS, SOLDIER? With all the shit Bush put your brothers-in-arms through, THIS is your best effort at smearing the new Commander-in-Chief?! If so, that’s just pathetic.
I mean seriously. Bush for sacrificed 4,300+ soldiers on the altar of a personal vendetta. Bush sent our boys into combat without proper body armor or equipment (which Rummy famously played down as “going to war with the army you have, not the army you wish you had”). Bush rewarded Cheney’s cronies at KBR for killing soldiers with their electro-showers. Bush outsourced facilities maintenance at Walter Reed to corrupt corporate cronies who couldn’t be trusted to deliver ice to Hurricane Katrina victims. And we all saw how well that turned out. And to further rub salt in the many wounds those soldiers received in battle, compounded with their horrific treatment at Walter Reed and other veterans’ medical facilities, Bush treated the VA like it was yet another welfare program. Oh yeah, let’s also not forget the effort on the part of the Bushies to underdiagnose PTSD cases and cover it up.
It’s amazing we haven’t seen the rise of another Bonus Army with the shitty way Bush treated the troops. Strangely, you seem to be perfectly willing to forgive him for all of that because he pranced around in a flight suit on the deck of the Abraham Lincoln, dazzling the “librul” media with his magic codpiece. But when Obama makes a minor protocol flub, you all but call for his impeachment.
IN WHAT UNIVERSE DOES THAT MAKE EVEN THE REMOTEST BIT OF SENSE?!
But even if we were to judge Presidents at the superficial level you use to bash Obama, would you be just as critical of Bush for pulling goofy stunts like this
Source: Der Spiegel
and would you be just as critical of Bush for deciding that letting Barney take a shit and getting on Marine One was more important than returning the salute of the Marine at the entrance? Or is that different?
Somehow I suspect I know the answer to that already.
