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FOR DEMOCRATS, VFW WILL BE A VERY TOUGH SELL --

The anti-war credentials that Sens. Hillary Clinton and

Barack Obama are brandishing on the campaign trail

might not do them much good this week in Kansas City.

 

 

For a previous story on the VFW convention, click here...
http://www.vawatchdog.org/07/
nf07/nfAUG07/nf081607-2.htm

For more on the VFW, use the VA Watchdog search engine...click here...
http://www.yourvabenefits.org/ses
search.php?q=vfw&op=and

Today's story here... http://www.kansascity
.com/news/politics/story/237689.html

Story below:

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For Democrats, VFW will be a very tough sell

By DAVID GOLDSTEIN and STEVE KRASKE
The Kansas City Star

The anti-war credentials that Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are brandishing on the campaign trail might not do them much good this week in Kansas City.

As featured speakers at the national convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the top Democratic presidential candidates could face a challenge in defending their views without sounding critical of their hosts.

“It’s Hillary and Obama in the lion’s den,” said Dennis Goldford, a political scientist at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa.

Other speakers, however, should get a reception like Derek Jeter stepping to the plate at Yankee Stadium.

President Bush, who will speak Wednesday, is a wartime commander in chief. Sen. John McCain, a Republican presidential candidate, is a former prisoner of war and military hero. His support of the war has been unwavering.

“We expect a warm reception,” said Brooke Buchanan, a spokeswoman for the senator from Arizona.

Likely Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson, a former senator from Tennessee, also will be there. He opposes a timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq.

That is where Clinton and Obama part company with the VFW, which has its headquarters in Kansas City. Though the two candidates have squabbled over Clinton’s vote in favor of the 2002 war resolution (Obama wasn’t in the Senate yet), both opposed the recent troop surge and both back the eventual withdrawal and redeployment of U.S. forces.

“This is analogous to Bush going to speak to the NAACP,” Goldford said.

There is little question that the positions that Clinton and Obama have taken differ from many of the nearly 6,000 people who will be in Bartle Hall, said John Green, who teaches politics at the University of Akron in Ohio.

“It might serve them well to be able to address that audience and get a respectful showing. It shows they can reach out to a diverse constituency, not an easy thing to do,” Green said.

After all, this is the same group that last year endorsed a Republican who was not a veteran in a high-profile Illinois congressional race over a Democrat who was.

Tammy Duckworth was an Army helicopter pilot in Iraq who lost both legs when a rocket-propelled grenade exploded. Duckworth, who said she considered the war a mistake, lost the race.

More recently, the VFW publicly backed the troop surge.

“Everybody I spoke to over there felt the surge was working, that we have the right strategy,” said Gary Kurpius, the VFW’s commander in chief, who recently returned from Iraq. “Everyone from the top man down … said if there’s one message to bring back, it is to let Congress and the American public know we want to be successful over here. We are making progress. Give us enough time to finish the job.”

Whatever reaction the candidates get from the VFW, no one will leave with an endorsement.

“We have to work with whoever wins,” Kurpius reasoned.

The VFW’s last endorsement for president came in 1996, when it backed World War II veteran and former Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas over President Bill Clinton.

But an endorsement from the group might not carry much political value anyway. Veterans are not a political monolith. Many veterans, including a lot of VFW members, disagree with the Iraq war.

A New York Times/CBS News poll in May found that two-thirds of the military families surveyed said the war was going badly, compared with just more than half who said that a year earlier. Fewer than half of those surveyed in May said the war was a good idea.

“Veterans poll differently on major issues just like anyone else in this country,” said Jon Soltz, a former Army captain who served in Iraq and Kosovo. He is a VFW member but founded and leads Vote Vets.org, which works to elect veterans.

The gulf between many members of the VFW and the American Legion and their conservative leaders is growing. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have produced a new generation of organizations staffed by younger ex-military who have seen their friends die in combat and know the grievously injured who fill military hospitals.

The new groups deal with an entirely new wave of concerns: from posttraumatic stress disorder, brain trauma and suicide to the scandal at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. The scandal exposed the woeful conditions and bureaucratic nightmares that injured servicemen and women face when they come home.

The scandal also underscored years of complaints from activists that the Bush administration has been more interested in using veterans as “political props” to promote the war than in taking their concerns seriously.

“What veterans are worried about is being used as some kind of political chew toy,” said VFW member Paul Rieckhoff, who led an Army combat platoon in Iraq and founded Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.

Kurpius said that all the 2.3 million-member VFW wants is some “straight talk” from the candidates on “where they’re going to take this country.” Aides to Clinton and Obama said that is just what the convention will get because the candidates have no intention of tailoring their views.

Obama “has laid out a plan to update our military for the 21st century and to redeploy our heroic troops onto the right battlefield,” said campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt.

“Senator Clinton has a long and extensive record of supporting the troops, but believes we’ve reached a critical point on Iraq and that we need to increase the pressure on the White House to change its policy,” said Clinton spokesman Phil Singer.

The VFW invited the top two candidates from each party. When Republicans Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney had scheduling conflicts, the VFW turned to Thompson, who is expected to formally enter the race next month.

Meanwhile, the anti-war group Code Pink intends to monitor what Obama and Clinton say to the VFW to make sure neither waffles on previous commitments.

“We’re really concerned that it’s not just about talking the talk, but walking the walk,” said Dana Balicki, a spokeswoman for the group.

SPEAKER SCHEDULE

Local dignitaries will give welcoming remarks. All the speeches are closed to the public.

Monday

8:35 a.m.: Kansas City Mayor Mark Funkhouser

8:45 a.m.: U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver of Missouri

9:20 a.m.: New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine

10 a.m.: Sen. Hillary Clinton

11 a.m.: Sen. John McCain

Tuesday

9:30 a.m.: Former Sen. Fred Thompson

11 a.m.: Sen. Barack Obama

Wednesday

9 a.m.: Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt

9:10 a.m.: Sen. Kit Bond of Missouri

9:55 a.m.: President Bush

What four veterans want to hear from candidates

Randy Barnett, president of the Vietnam Veterans of America, Chapter 317, in Kansas City:

“That they’re going to give the VA all the money it needs. … I want to hear that they’re gong to do mandatory funding for the (Department of Veterans Affairs), not discretionary funding like it is now where they have to beg for all the money they get.

“… They have increased funding (in recent years) at the VA more than any other president, but it’s still not enough funding just because of inflation and the increase in medical costs.

“On Iraq, they need to get it over and done with. That’s what I’d like to hear everybody say. I’ve been against it from the beginning.”

James Hughes, former commander of the Missouri VFW:

“We would like to hear they are in support of our troops, the individual soldier, and airman and Marine that’s in the field, that there’s not a feeling of an us-versus-them position.

“When these young men and young women join, they don’t join as Republicans or Democrats. They join as young patriots who are doing a public service and they’ve chosen the military arena.

“… I’m a Vietnam veteran. I lived through a time when dislike for the war transferred to dislike for the warrior. I worry that some of this rhetoric may transfer to the point that dislike for the war will transfer to the dislike for the individual warrior. … I would like to see the anti-war rhetoric end.”

Kathleen Aylward-Barnes of Westwood, who serves on the national finance committee for Veterans of Modern Warfare:

“They need to recognize the fact this is the first war we’ve had female veterans, and how do you plan to address this issue? This is totally separate from a male veteran.

“I want to ask them how do you see resolving the war and getting out of there? None of them have any specific written plan for withdrawing our troops and saying, ‘Hey, guys. The party’s over. This is yours now.’ We can’t afford it. We should be spending money on education, health care and rebuilding the infrastructure of this country.

“How are we going to restructure the VA and improve their budget in order to handle these veterans coming home and the numbers that this country has never experienced before?

“(The vets coming home have) a higher survival rate (but) with lots of disabilities, particularly with mental and emotional disabilities and TBI, which is traumatic brain injury."

Richard Hardy, senior vice commander, VFW Post 6401, Bonner Springs:

“I want to hear how we’re going to finish the war and how we’re going to maintain peace in the Middle East, neither of which will happen. I want to hear how we’re going to control our borders and how we’re going to reinstate the draft.

“That would straighten out a tremendous amount of problems with kids in this country. They’d earn a little respect, which they do not have. Teach them a little bit about the country. Learn more about government and how things really operate.

“… I want to know how we’re going to maintain our Army. I think at present we’ve destroyed our Army. If we were to become engaged in another conflict anywhere, the Navy and the Air Force would have to do it."

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Larry Scott  --