Hell Hath No Fury

Yesterday, the Swifties rejected the President's call to cease and desist.

Anyone surprised by this, please report to the Intellectual Maintenance department for a replacement clue.

Withdrawing would have proven the Democrat allegations that the Swifties were controlled illegally (under our hopelessly byzantine campaign finance laws) from the White House. It would have given the Dems their "hanging chad" to complain about for four more years.

More importantly, I don't think the Swifties care. This is not mere politics to them, any more than fathers' rights or concealed carry is "just politics" to me.

They're dealing with a man who has cynically hijacked the most wrenching, "searing searing" experience of their lives for political gain (not unheard of) and, if the Swifties' allegations are correct, horrendously abused that prerogative.

I've known a lot of veterans. They're pretty forgiving of things people do in combat; I've heard very few condemn those who, in the middle of a freezing dark night after weeks in a foxhole under shellfire, put a gun to their boot and squeezed the trigger.

But of the things that non-combat people do when it comes to combat? That's often another story.

In the classic Up Front by the late great cartoonist Bill Mauldin, the author explained the scorn the front-line riflemen had for the "garritroopers", the mechanics and typists and truck drivers in the rear areas, who pilfered the field jackets and combat boots meant for front-line guys in order to better look the part of the conquering hero to the local ladies, even though they'd never been shot at.

Marines on Guadalcanal told the contemptuous tale of the "REMF" (That's "Rear Echelon..." er, "...Motley Fellow") colonels who were caught in a latrine during a Japanese shelling, and ran together toward a dugout. After the shelling, they wrote each other up for Silver Star commendations. The story was probably apocryphal, but illustrates the contempt the combat soldier feels for the guys in the rear-area who try to pretend they were really up where the real fighting, and killing and dying, were being done. The club of men who've watched their friends die just outside the reach of the medics, seen their planes spiral into the ground, watched as the parts of the ship their buddies were in broke away and sank, is a very exclusive one, and it doesn't tolerate imposters well.

That lack of tolerance can be shown in trivial ways; I've watched as yahoos started bragging about time spent in a military unit and, under questioning from real veterans about real details about the unit (their job, their post or port, their commander), slink away to howls of derision. And I read, shocked, at the story of Admiral Boorda, former Chief of Naval Operations, who committed suicide in humiliation after being caught with a medal he had not earned.

The Swifties, to a man, earned the right to criticize John Kerry; they came to Vietnam, and either spent their full year in country (sometimes more than once), or were medevacked out to the hospital.

I'm not the one to quibble about Kerry's Silver Star. I'm not the one to pick nits about the details about his three Purple Hearts. I'm not the one to split hairs over the difference between "no fire" and "heavy fire" - to me, one bullet fired within 180 degrees of me is heavy incoming. I'm not the one to question Kerry's judgement calls.

But the Swifties are. And women scorned are nothing compared to veterans who've faced imposters, poseurs and the Cliff Clavins of the world.