THE
HEAVE-HO
The
news that as much as 40% of the overseas military vote had
been disqualified by local canvassing boards was shocking
even to Joe Lieberman, who denied all knowledge of a concerted
Gore campaign effort on the Sunday morning talk shows –
even when confronted with a 5-page
memo from Democratic legal strategist Mark L. Herron,
a prominent Tallahassee lawyer, instructing party activists
in the fine points of disqualifying overseas ballots. According
to Fox News, "the letter focused on protesting military
ballots, which are assumed to be heavily in favor of Bush,
and included a section on military postmarks." In an interview,
Herron admitted that his missive "went to folks we had in
the field that were out there monitoring absentee ballots,
just like the other side was out there. Our memo was intended
to express the law of the state of Florida as we understand
it and provide direction and guidance to the people who were
in the field." The Democrats' dirty work was a smashing success:
over 1,100 overseas ballots were thrown out, as of Friday:
some counties threw out as many as half or more of the overseas
ballots, the great majority on the grounds that they didn't
bear a military postmark. (It is estimated that as much as
half of all military mail goes unpostmarked as a matter of
course.) In Broward county, a Democratic stronghold where
"dimples" now count as votes, a whopping 304 ballots largely
from overseas military personnel were given the heave-ho,
and only 92 accepted. In counties where the Democratic machine
is comfortably ensconced – Alachua, Dade, Escambia, Orange,
etc. – the story is the same: as many if not more were
thrown out as were approved.
RISKY
SCHEMES
That
his campaign would even attempt to pull this off is proof
that Gore is far too reckless to be trusted with presidency.
Talk about risky schemes! Larry
Sabato was right – for once – when he put it
this way:
"If
it is true that Democratic lawyers targeted the military votes,
then it's going to be a real problem for him if he is elected.
This kind of story lives forever in the military – that
someone might become commander-in-chief by having his representatives
try to disqualify every available military ballot on the basis
that they'd be for Bush."
GOP
WAKE-UP CALL
The
Herron memo and its shocking results acted as an eleventh-hour
wake-up call to the Republicans, who suddenly sprang to life
and leaped into battle, guns blazing. Hurrah! Hurrah! The
cavalry is coming over the hill! Leading the charge was none
other than Stormin' Norman
Schwartzkopf, who demanded that the military votes be
tallied and thundered that ''It is a very sad day in our country
when the men and women of the armed forces are serving abroad
and facing danger on a daily basis ... yet because of some
technicality out of their control, they are denied the right
to vote for the president of the United States who will be
their commander in chief.'' The patrician Jim Baker was gone,
for the moment, replaced by a new GOP point man, Governor
Mark Racicot of Montana, whose eloquence and passion gives
voice to a cause that had,
up until that point, been largely voiceless. "The vice
president's lawyers have gone to war against the men and women
who serve in our Armed Forces in an effort to win at any cost,"
he declared, as he detailed the outrageous combination of
opportunism, criminal negligence, and chicanery engaged in
by Democratic party operatives in Florida. The press, he declared,
must now more than ever fulfill its role in a free society
as a watchdog. What noble words – how touchingly naïve!
As if the lapdog media, which cares about nothing but cozying
up to power, were not linked by a thousand corporate and personal
strands to the Powers that Will Be.
LOOKIN'
UGLY
The
sheer ugliness of the Gore campaign's effort to disenfranchise
the military is compounded by the foreign policy planks in
the Gore platform that would put American troops in the crossfire
all over the world. After all, Gore is the expansive interventionist
who attacked Bush for his typically Republican skepticism
of American attempts at "nation-building," from Somalia to
Kosovo. Gore's foreign policy would send our sons and daughters
to every continent, yet his operatives here in this country
seek to deny them their constitutional right to vote. If this
doesn't wake up – and enrage – the American people,
then they deserve Al Gore.
UNDER
THE INFLUENCE
For
a while there the media was trying to convince us that an
ancient DUI charge was supposed to be enough to shatter all
hope that Dubya would ever make it to the White House. Question:
Why doesn't the exposure of this despicable dirty trick
explode Gore's chances? Answer: because it doesn't receive
the same kind of relentless drumbeat coverage. The mainstream
media ignored this story for weeks: WorldNetDaily was
the first to notice "irregularities" in the military vote
before Election Day. On November
4, they ran a piece on how Navy personnel were having
trouble procuring absentee ballots. On November 10, they ran
a
story detailing the charges of Florida congressman Joe
Scarborough demanding an armed services committee investigation
of the Democratic vote-suppression campaign. Four days later
they ran an
investigative piece by Jon E. Doughtery detailing the
"accidental" loss of military ballots and reporting the widespread
sense of outrage among the troops. As I reported in a
recent column, according to WND,
"Some
American military families in Germany are reportedly flying
the American flag upside down – a traditional sign of
distress – at their places of residence, as a result
of the presidential election and the subsequent balloting
difficulties. In some cases, local military police have forced
personnel to take the inverted flags down."
THE
FIX IS IN
As
usual, the Internet – specifically, the conservative-libertarian
alternative media – was waaaay ahead of the "mainstream"
on this one. We didn't hear about this on "Meet the Press"
until it was almost too late to do anything about it. After
all, the media has already begun the "countdown" to what is
supposed to be the ultimate "closure" for this growing crisis
of presidential succession, the Florida Supreme Court decision.
That, we are told, is going to be the end of it – at
least, if George W. Bush decides to be "a uniter, not a divider."
The fix is in, and there's no way out of it – is there?
AT
THE BRINK?
The
mere suggestion that the men and women of the military might
be legitimately disgruntled, and might want – or even
demand – a voice and a vote sends shivers down the spines
of otherwise spineless bourgeois liberals, who suddenly become
ultra-strict republicans (small-'r," of course) and insist
that the military has a duty to remain silent. "It's a near-nuclear
escalation of the partisan conflict that is going to make
any rebuilding difficult," complained Allan Lichtman, professor
and presidential historian at American University in Washington.
"I think it's incredibly dangerous. This invoking of the military
does almost amount to an implicit charge of treason. I just
hope people step back from the rhetorical brink and let the
court system do its work."
BE
A GOOD SOLDIER
Just
bend over, boys – and I'm speaking directly to all you
military boys (and girls) out there – and take it like
a good soldier. Suffer in silence, surrender your will and
your democratic rights to whomever happens to steal the White
House, and never – never – ask questions.
Just be ready to ship out at a moment's notice for Colombia,
Kosovo, or the Caucasus in defense of the corporate investments
of Al Gore's buddies – and be grateful we let you have
those food stamps.
DELIVER
US FROM EVIL
Listen,
soldier, you don't have to take it. You don't have
to stand silently by while your right to vote is denied –
and your government is captured by a gang that has nothing
but contempt for you. Now is the time for the military to
step forward and claim its rightful role as the savior of
the nation. You have protected us from external enemies, both
real and imagined, through two world wars and a cold war:
now you must deliver us from evil on the home front –
while it is still possible. Al Gore doesn't recognize your
legitimacy as a citizen and a voter – why should you
recognize his?
RE-VOTE!
The
heavily Democratic county of Palm Beach, Florida, is making
a national stink over the alleged treachery of the infamous
"butterfly" ballot and several lawsuits have been brought
– with Democratic party support – demanding that
the city be allowed to re-vote. But what about the military
– if anybody deserves a re-vote it is the men
and women in uniform whose ballots were lost, disqualified,
and actively sabotaged by Gore operatives. Oh, but this is
bound to rattle poor Barbara
Ehrenreich, the liberal commentator and author, who whined
that the Bush camp's rhetoric over the issue of the military
vote was becoming "alarming." Raising the prospect of a Seven
Days in May scenario, she worriedly averred that "There's
always an issue in this country on whether the military is
really under civilian control." By defending the right of
servicemen and women to vote, the Bush camp, she said, is
making charges that "bore a resemblance to rhetorical appeals
to the military heard amid power struggles in 'banana republics'
and other less-developed democracies." Does "civilian control"
of the military mean that soldiers have no rights – no
right to vote, to organize politically, to add their voices
to our national symphony of "diversity'? Republicans campaigned
for the votes of servicemen and women stationed overseas,
not to get them to march on Washington and take the White
House, and they have the right to have their votes counted.
Only a banana republic – a nation with a long history
of military coups and beribboned caudillos – is so afraid
of the military that it reacts with such extreme alarm as
exhibited by Ms. Ehrenreich and her liberal confreres. For
their part, they have made sure that our national dialogue
now more resembles that of, say, Nicaragua, than the America
of what seems like only a few short years ago.
SOLDIERS
ARE CITIZENS
Should
the military just shut up and take it? Clearly, the answer
must be an emphatic no. Soldiers are citizens, too,
and if they fail in that aspect of their duties then they
have failed the test of their vocation. At this crucial moment
in our history, a turning point – and not for the better
– Americans in uniform could play a key role and an entirely
legitimate and constitutional one, merely by exercising their
First Amendment right to free speech. The political impact
of a rank-and-file military protest against the Democratic
vote-suppression campaign could deal a death blow to Gore's
presidential pretensions. It is a tradition that American
military commanders in the field, including the top
brass in the Pentagon, stay out of politics, at least until
after retirement: but the Founders never meant this
rule to apply to the rank-and-file, the Average Joe (or, now,
Jane) in uniform. During the Vietnam war, when antiwar protests
divided the nation, liberals like Ms. Ehrenreich were angrily
defending the rights of servicemen to speak out against the
war – in the name of free speech, of course. Why the
sudden shift in the liberals' touching concern for the First
Amendment rights of American soldiers? Suddenly, Ehrenreich
and her ilk are worried about "civilian control" of the military.
But now is not the time for soldiers to remain silent. They
can and must take an active part in the resistance to what
is nothing less than an illegal seizure of power. They have
a duty to speak out against their own disenfranchisement,
one that is on the same level as their duty to repel a foreign
enemy.
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