November 2000
HE TOO LOATHES THE MILITARY

How ironic. The very same week that William Jefferson Clinton finally took an all-expenses-paid trip to Vietnam, courtesy of Uncle Sam, the country also witnessed his would-be successor, Vice President Al Gore, attempting to benefit from a strategy to deny our men and women in uniform on duty overseas the right to vote.

Our Forty-Second President, Bill Clinton, never got along with the men and women of the armed forces, as has been made abundantly clear in these pages. In 1969, he dodged the draft three times, once by committing to matriculate in the Reserve Officers Training Corps program at the University of Arkansas.

Clinton felt guilty, because he never intended to study at the University of Arkansas or to enroll in the ROTC program there. He was just a coward, fearing for his own physical safety, who would say anything to avoid answering his countryÂ’s call to serve in Vietnam. So another young Arkansan went to Vietnam in ClintonÂ’s place. More to assuage his sense of personal guilt than for any other reason, Bill Clinton wrote to the Army colonel in charge of the ROTC program at the University of Arkansas. In his letter, Clinton apologized for his subterfuge, explaining that it was necessary to maintain his "political viability." He also said that he understood why many of his companions "loathed the military."

At that time, Bill Clinton did anything necessary to avoid that flight to Vietnam in a commercial airliner or a C-130. However, 31 years later, he was only too happy to make the trip aboard Air Force One. On his arrival in Vietnam, he was greeted as a hero by the Communist Vietnamese. They seemed to care little about his numerous scandals or his degrading the Oval Office by carrying on with female interns, committing perjury, obstructing justice, or the charge of rape brought against him by Juanita Broadderick.

All they cared about was that he had denounced the American effort to fight for the freedom of the South Vietnamese. He had organized the largest anti-American rally outside the United States of the Vietnam era when he led a shameful demonstration outside the gates of the U.S. Embassy in London.

Clinton had fled to London as a Rhodes Scholar rather than answer his draft notice. He organized anti-American demonstrations against U.S. involvement in Vietnam rather than attend classes. He never received his Oxford degree, but won the life-long affections of the brutal Communist Vietnamese.

Meanwhile, little of ClintonÂ’s U.S. state visit to Vietnam, first since the war, made the news because of the count, recount, and re-recount of the votes in Florida for Bill ClintonÂ’s designated successor, Al Gore. I was hoping to write an article about the outcome of the events in Florida and the final outcome of the race for the presidency, but we are already well past the press deadline for this issue of the newsletter, and the outcome in Florida is still in doubt.

There is no doubt, however, that the massive legal effort by the Gore camp to undermine FloridaÂ’s election rules and procedures, and to vilify and discredit the state official, Kathe-rine Harris, elected to carry them out, mirrors the strategy and tactics employed by Al GoreÂ’s mentor in waging political war, Bill Clinton, during ClintonÂ’s impeachment imbroglio.

GoreÂ’s legal team researched and instructed all the Democrat recount observers and Democrat canvassers exactly how to use details and vagaries of Florida election law to disenfranchise our men and women in the military of the vote.

Florida law states that all overseas ballots cast on or before Election Day, November 7, must be counted. One indicator of the date the ballot was cast may be the postmark. This should not be the ultimate indicator, however, because our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines stationed abroad do not have to pay postage. Thus, their envelopes have no stamps and often no postmarks. For that reason, Gore has his henchmen fighting to keep Florida from counting the absentee ballots cast by our military who call Florida home.

The irony is that the men and women who volunteered to put their lives on the line so that the rest of us can live in a free country where we elect our leaders are being denied the right to vote by someone whose ambition is to serve as their commander-in-chief! At this writing, the Gore campaign has used legal technicalities to throw out some 1,527 military absentee ballots in Flo-rida. Bush still leads by 930 votes, and has at least 63% of the absentee military ballot votes counted.

By the time you read this, we will already know the final outcome of the 2000 presidential election. None of us should ever forget the shameful tactics of the Democrats in this campaign.

You can bet that if Al Gore succeeded in stealing the election, our men and women of the military will not soon forget. We will have four more years of frosty relations between the White House and the Pentagon and continuing low morale in the ranks.

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