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George W. Bush and other mistakes 8/15/2013 6:00:17 AM
George W. Bush is a disgrace to the uniform I wore proudly I received an e-mail recently from a fellow Vietnam vet and former pilot, a guy who’s political views are somewhat different from my own. Isn’t this a great country where we can take to the internet, the new public campfire, and say whatever we like, and no one stifles us, or erases what we say, or brings legal action for what we write, unless we advocate a government overthrow or shout movie! in a crowded firehouse. What a great place to live. The e-mail in question was proof that we can say and show anything we wish. The picture displays our past eleven presidents, all in some military uniform or other, with the last one being President Obama dressed in the uniform of Jihadi. Cute, I thought. I really hoped the right wing cranks had moved on to something else, something important like jobs or the economy, but perhaps not.
In any case, speaking of uniforms, the picture above was taken in Vietnam sometime in 1970. I’m third from the left, which is not as far left as I should have been standing according to my wife. I wore that uniform proudly for damn near thirty years. Not the same one, of course, or the health department would have been involved. In my book, The Sky Behind Me, a Memoir of Flying and Life I refer to some of the adventures I had with various National Guard units I served with after Vietnam, the summer camps and extra missions that kept my flying skills up and allowed me to serve in a capacity that suited me, so to speak. In every unit I served with there was the occasional slacker. There was a fellow in the Kentucky Guard where I was posted for two years, a guy who showed up late quite often, if he arrived at all. He had powerful relatives in Kentucky, so he assumed that the rules of deportment and accountability didn’t apply to him. The man was an outcast. None of the enlisted troops, and very few of the officer corps had anything to do with him. Just so, in Ohio, a fellow aviator showed a similar casual attitude about drill weekends and deployment, tolerated because his father had been a sergeant major in the Army, and the young fellow knew good old dad was there to keep him out of scrapes. In Iowa a similar situation. One of my flying colleagues was the son of a general. He made it to drills most days, some not at all, and he drifted around from unit to unit, never quite fitting in.
Then there was George W. Bush. Here’s a fellow who’s powerful dad got him into the Texas Air Guard during the Vietnam war when there were no slots available in the Texas Guard. Not one slot was open, but George junior managed to get one anyway. Then dad, George senior, got young George into flight school, again, with no slots available. W learned to fly jets. He never deployed, never flew in harm’s way, and yes, showed up for drills and Guard functions less than half the time. In fact, unit records show that George W. Bush never fulfilled his National Guard requirement.
The e-mail really got my motor running, because the fellow who sent it, a Viet vet helicopter pilot and long term National Guard member like myself supports and endorses Mr. Bush. Why? As the nuns used to tell me, “it’s a mystery.” What I say about it is this: George W. Bush was a disgrace to the uniform I wore proudly all those years. His so called service was a mistake, just like the ill-advised invasion of Iraq that he pushed us into, partly because he had no perspective on what war truly was, thus no understanding of its true costs and responsibilities. His attitude in 1970 was cavalier and dismissive about military service, and it was in 2003 as well.
I wrote the fellow back and asked him to please not show George W. Bush in uniform ever again. We’ll see what his response is.
