Romney: Another Chickenhawk

I've always found it kind of odd that Mitt Romney never quite managed to find the time to serve his country in the US Armed forces. After all, Mitt is of an age (born in 1947) that, when the 1960s were in full flower and the flower of American youth was called to serve and die, that he really should have been called to serve.

Of course he was on a mission for the Moron Mormon church for two years in, of all places, France! How many Frenchmen can be wrong? All of them who fall for the cheese-pie-in-the-sky fantasies of the Mormons...

Okay, cheap shot -- everyone knows that I don't hate the French. But I do hate most Mormons and I hate most Mormon missionaries (okay, hate is a strong word for what is really a kind of special pity for a naive bunch of brainwashed children) and I especially hate chickenhawks.

So why is it that Mitt, even though he was pretty public in demonstrating in support of the draft at Stanford(!) in 1966, was never sent that infamous "greeting" that a lot of us got when we were afforded that "opportunity" to serve our Uncle Sam?

The article linked above seems to conclude that his status as a "missionary of god" got him a permanent exemption, but I know that this is a faulty conclusion. It got him a deferment only for the 24 months that he was "laboring" in the mission field, but after that he was -- or should have been -- 1A with his local draft board again.

When I was an unwilling employee of Uncle Sam myself, I was in training with this creepy crewcut geekezoid -- he looked a lot like that Gary Larson kid with the black glasses and flattop haircut -- from Idaho who was a "returned missionary", having served his two years in Germany. He was, like me, a draftee, but he was also a scion of Mormon Royalty from several Utah generations (you'd recognize the name immediately if you knew anything about Mormon Royalty). Back then, I thought that most Mormons were a patriotic lot and wouldn't consider avoiding the draft.

Still, when something over 80% of my basic training company -- all draftees, of course -- got sent to advanced infantry training at Fort Polk Louisiana (prep school for Vietnam) Mister Mormon Royalty managed to snag himself a plum quasi-diplomatic liaison assignment to ... Germany. All because he spoke (sort of) German.

Which brings us full circle back to Chickenhawk Romney. If he didn't get that deferment because he was on a mission, then why didn't he get drafted?

Could it be that it was because his father, George Romney, who himself had avoided the WWII draft himself by making cars in Detroit, was the governor of Michigan?

And even though our Mittsy was in favor of the war, he just didn't want to dirty his own hands with it; his father, when he tried to run for president (yes, it's true) in 1968, came out against the war and said that, when he was for it before he was against it, he'd been "brainwashed" by the generals. Which history shows was his knell of doom...

Politics is a dirty business, but it ought to be at least a public dirty business. Mitt Romney needs to clear the air, straighten out the record, and come clean as to why, if he really supported the war, he didn't do anything personally to help win it. Like enlist. Or like allow himself to get drafted.

But I'm not gonna hold my breath waiting for it. The fucker won't even make public his goddam tax returns. He's not going to address a half-century old question as to why he, despite having every opportunity to do so, did not serve his country in the Vietnam War.