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politics and politicians Title: Romney & Gingrich: The Draft Dodgers That Want to Send Your Kids to War When it came time for Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich to serve in the armed forces during the Vietnam War in the 1960s, both Presidential candidates weaseled out of their duty to “serve their country”. Now they espouse hawkish rhetoric, vehemently back the occupation of Afghanistan, think it was a mistake to pull combat troops out of Iraq (a result of a Bush-era agreement with Iraq), and more recently have touted the need to invade Iran. Just as it’s easy to spend money that isn’t yours, it’s just as easy to send kids to war that aren’t your own. That’s the crux of what Mitt Romney and Gingrich have advocated and what they intend to do if either of them are elected to the highest office in the nation. Living in a palace in France during a mission for the Mormon church, Mitt Romney didn’t get to witness the horrors of the Vietnam War, where over fifty-thousand Americans died. Romney received a deferment in order to further spread his religion in France for two and a half years. While American troops were fighting the Viet Cong in jungles deep inside of Vietnam, Mitt Romney was quoting verses of the Book of Mormon and improving his French. The Parisian mansion Mitt Romney was living in also had a chef and a houseboy. According to the Deseret News, in 1966, before Romney headed off to France under a church obtained draft deferral, he was a part of a counter-protest at Stanford University against a group that was staging a sit-in in opposition to draft status tests. It seems like Romney’s flipflopping career began even before his political career did. Gingrich, on the other hand, received one of his many deferments on the basis of starting a new family with his wife and kids. These are the same kids and cancer stricken wife, who he left just a few years later. While he wholeheartedly believed in sending young Americans to their graves in Vietnam, he cowered away from military service stating in 1985 to the Wall Street Journal, “Part of the question I had to ask myself was what difference I would have made.” Newt believed that one individual, particularly himself, going to Vietnam wouldn’t have made a difference. Robert Scheer over at the LA Times put it eloquently, The media have basically accepted him on his own terms as a righteous champion of family values determined to do battle with the “counterculture” and big government in Washington. Yet here is a professional politician who walked out on his own family with two young children at a time when his wife had cancer. Those kids were the basis of this super-patriot’s draft deferment during the Vietnam War. Now, there’s something to be said about military service: It isn’t for everyone and there are many, many legitimate reasons for not joining the Army. The issue with Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich is one of hypocrisy; the notion that they did everything they could to escape the draft into a war while at the same time verbally backing that war and now backing more interventionist wars abroad. They don’t seem to have a problem with bloodshed so long as it isn’t their own blood. This isn’t only true of Romney and Gingrich; it’s true of most neoconservative warhawks like Bill Kristol and Richard Perle whose jingoist rhetoric has resulted in thousands of dead American soldiers and thousands of families missing a son, daughter, father, or mother. The one other frontrunner in the Republican race for President definitely deserves a mention. That’s Ron Paul–the doctor that served in the US Air Force as a flight surgeon during the Vietnam War, who also has the most support from active duty troops. Isn’t it striking how the only Republican frontrunner who actually served in the US military is the one diametrically opposed to the neoconservative agenda of spreading our troops around the globe and endangering us at home?
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