Bush Administration Talks Tough
But Fails To Support The Military

If, during George Bush’s recent State of the Union address, American military personnel and their families were waiting to receive their justly deserved praise, plus a firm and outlined commitment to support servicemen and women in every way, they must surely have been disappointed. It was only in passing that Mr. Bush recognized the sacrifices of our military, and he tied the comments to himself with a reference to his flight deck performance and his Thanksgiving photo op in Iraq.

Mr. Bush did pledge to supply the troops with all the resources they need, but for the service people with the closest knowledge of conditions in Iraq, this must have had a hollow ring to it. The Bush Administration hasn’t even been able to provide blanks for the new Iraq security forces to use in training; instead the trainees and their American trainers have to say "bang, bang," or "ratatatat," when they want to illustrate that a weapon has been fired. This would be comical if it wasn’t so illustrative of the two faces of the Republican Administration: On the one hand, Mr. Bush and the GOP is gung-ho, ready to ‘bring ‘em on,’ and on the other hand they can’t quite get it together to provide the full resources the troops need, undoubtedly because of other priorities for the billions of dollars that are being spent.

American men and women are being killed and wounded pretty much every day in Iraq and Afghanistan, and their families have a right to know that their sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, were given every tool needed to defend and protect themselves. There should be no higher priority, but what the State of the Union speech did was provide further lip service.

Colbert I. King, a Washington Post columnist, put it this way: "Instead of a moment of silence for those who have paid the ultimate price, (service people and by extension, their families) heard presidential pitches for prescription drugs and a new immigration law, and a denunciation of steroids and gay marriage. Instead of hearing the president recognize the preciousness of young lives expended far from home, they got a plea to put Social Security taxes in personal retirement accounts. Instead of telling the country why it should remember what the dead and dying stood for, Americans were given an earful on child tax credits, the death tax and cuts in taxes on capital gains."

Mr. King, who takes pains to point out he is not "a Bush hater…George Bush is not the ogre his critics make him out to be," nonetheless found the GOP cheerleading during the speech distasteful.

"But all the smiling and presidential bonhomie on display seemed ill-placed for a country still at war," King said. "Looking at the partisan cheering and all of the leaping-to-their-feet on the Republican side of the aisle, you wouldn’t know that thousands of Americans are bearing the sorrows of armed conflict…(this) was the time to tell U.S. families whose sons and daughters are losing their lives and limbs that their brave sacrifices still make sense – even as we saw on the front page a photograph of able-bodied Iraqi men enjoying themselves at the horse races."

The State of the Union speech, he observes, "was the time to explain why the nation is straining under a growing budget deficit, and why the military is stretched to nearly the breaking point. The families needed an honest answer as to why young men and women in uniform are expected to fight and die in a country dominated by clerics who want our protection as they vie for power and, once they get it, want us gone."

Those answers, like the blank bullets for training, were not forthcoming from Mr. Bush and his Republican Administration.