Politics
Election 2012: Military (war) veterans slanting towards Obama
Romney, along with his primary rivals Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich, had also accused Obama of “appeasement” toward U.S. enemies – a charge that drew a sharp Obama rebuttal. “Ask Osama bin Laden and the 22 out of 30 top al-Qaeda leaders who’ve been taken off the field whether I engage in appeasement,” the president shot back. He has reproached GOP candidates: “Now is not the time for bluster.”
If the election were held today, Obama would win the veteran vote by as much as seven points over Romney, higher than his margin in the general population.
Fading Cool Factor
The GOP’s heated rhetoric, aimed at the party’s traditional hawks, might be expected to resonate with veterans. Yet in interviews in South Carolina, a military-friendly red state, many former soldiers expressed anger at the toll of a decade of war, questioned the legitimacy of George W. Bush’s Iraq invasion, and worried that the surge in Afghanistan won’t make a difference in the long run.
“We looked real cool going into Iraq waving our guns,” said McDowell, 50, who retired from the 82d Airborne Division in November with a Legion of Merit and two Bronze Stars. “But people lost their lives, and it made no sense.”
Now he worries. “I really don’t like the direction we are going, how we seem to come closer daily towards a war with Iran.”
In Columbia, where McDowell lives in a leafy subdivision, the streets are named for American Revolutionary war heroes, and the Confederate battle flag still flies on the capitol grounds. Pizza parlors offer a 10 percent discount to uniformed soldiers from nearby Fort Jackson, one of eight military bases that pump US$13 billion a year into the state’s economy.
