Do you remember how military members had no respect for Clinton when he was Commander In Chief?

Question

I was in the Navy at the time, and I distinctly remember a good number of people - officers and enlisted alike - making disrespectful comments about him.

I'm wondering how military members can hold George W. Bush in such reverence, and the only thing I can think of is that people tend to support the Commander in Chief that they voted for.

Do you think there's any validity to that conclusion? If not, what would you attribute it to? It can't really be his prosecution of the war on terror, can it? And it appears to me that he has figuratively defecated on Veteran's Benefits, especially disabled ones.

So why respect him and not Clinton?

Answer 1

are we a flaming liberal? is this the team your switching to? or is it just all the butt love that excites you, which would make you a flamer for sure.
as for respect-Clinton got impeached. Sure good old Al Gore would have a handle on all this, like global warming-o well-99% of that movie is a lie also-figures.

Answer 2

Lets get the record straight people. For one thing the Military members are not obligated to respect the President of the United States. You cannot get anyone to obligate their respect. The military is Required to OBEY the ORDERS of the President of the United States, who is also the COMMANDER IN CHIEF. I had respect for former President Clinton until he approved all of those reductions of the military and set us up for another Possible Pearl Harbor. This is also to blame upon the Congress an Senate for approving it. As to President Bush, I still respect his initial response to the Terrorist Attacks. Lately, I have lost some respect for his decisions, which are made on the recommendation of the Secretary Of Defense. I do not trust Secretary Rumsfeld and I personally believe he should be relieved.
In my years of service prior to my retirement, I served with many different presidents in office and I never truly agreed with everything they did or said, however if it had come down to fulfilling my duties to protect my country, I would have followed any of them or all of them to Hell.
It would not necessarily been becuase of them, but because I believe in and Love this country.
Where else can you criticize someone in an elected office and walk the street safely and not be arrested or beat or killed?

Answer 3

You are creating linkage between both Presidents that fattempts to force any serious answer to choose to respect Clinton solely on the basis that Bush is in the wrong. Such linkage is erroneous.

Clinton cut the military from 2.1 million to 1.4 million. He cut readiness by eliminating units and infrastructure that resulted in the loss of decades of accumulated professional experience. The Army alone does the best it can with a mere 10 Divisions instead of 18, being forced to expand them from 3 Brigades to 4 in order to compensate for the shortage of deployable units.

Clinton (and then Defense Secretary Les Aspin) also lost immense respect, especially in the special operations community, for their lack of support during the entire Somalia debacle, particularly Mogadishu. Clinton cut the numbers of those un uniform, but then proceeded to put them on burnout rotations in places like Haiti, Bosnia, and Kosovo. If you want to talk about prosecution of the War on Terror, Clinton had Tomahawk missiles fired into Somalia, Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan, and Pakistan. Count within these accomplishments the destruction of a phamaceutical plant in Khartoum and the disastrous strike on the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade. That's worth revering Clinton?

The current President has raised the military pay year on year, bringing it closer to parity at last with equivalent civilian pay. SGLI has been raised from $250,000 to $400,000. Veterans are supported, thank you very much.

When a man has true accomplishments to his name, you cannot deny those accomplishments entirely by taking just the evil he has done. Clinton reduced our budget deficit and put us on the right track to reducing our national debt. He understood diplomacy and was a master at attaining consensus, but neither understood the military nor utilized properly the leverage it gave him in foreign affairs. The current C-in-C has wrecked the budget, but his initial domestic-focused policy agenda was ruined by 9/11, and reneging on tax cuts would have destroyed all credibility he had for maintaining consensus within his own party.

However, whatever dislike you may harbor for President Bush, he has done the American military well - unlike Clinton. However you feel about the War on Terror, failure with its conduct does not reflect well on Clinton, nor is grounds to lionize him.

Answer 4

The military, as you remember, are obligated to respect the Commander in Chief. But there are a lot of eye rolling in the crowd if you look closely. Now they're are shocked by recent pedophelia the Republican party was hiding and they don't know what to do anymore. They are shocked and stunned.

Answer 5

I think alot of Military disdain of Clinton was due to His Economic Shellgame of depleeting funds to the Military to pack the Deficit so Politically He could claim a Surplus.
And by doing so we were ill prepared when terrorists attacked.

Answer 6

interior the army, between the main mandatory issues taught/discovered is that collectively as you do not would desire to understand the guy, you will desire to understand the rank. As it rather is the way issues are achieved in our united states of america, no count if he has served or not or in case you like him or not, he's interior the functionality of Commander-in-chief of america military and understand would desire to get carry of to *that*. Now, for my area, i might rather prefer to have somebody as our Commander-In-chief who has military provider who's former Enlisted, not Officer, yet I also have a exceptionally solid wager that which will by no potential ensue...

Answer 7

If it wasn't for Clinton downsizing the military he couldn't have reduced the deficit by $127 billion, which he did.
Not to mention, now many top military officials are calling for the resignation of Rumsfeld. Go figure.

Answer 8

You certainly are right about the disabled benefits! I am a disabled Army veteran, and since Bush has been in office, all it is is, cut, cut, cut! Nobody at the Veteran's Hospital I go to likes him, even the employees don't like him.

Answer 9

I was enlisted while Clinton was president, and yeah, there were plenty of people that where very vocal about not liking him. That said, we all did our jobs and followed our orders. We did not like the man but we respected the Office he held.

Answer 10

Because most US military members have neither brains nor honor.

Clinton was honest about avoiding the draft.

Bush is DIShonest about avoiding the draft by illicitly joining the National Guard (by undue influence of his father, jumping over dozens of candidates in line) and then going AWOL, avoiding his enlistment commitment.