Why are wars okay if there's a republican and not okay when there's a democrat in the white house?

Question

I don't remember any pleas about "supporting your troops" when Clinton was sending troops to various places.

If Patriots aren't supposed to dissent, why were republicans dissenting when Clinton was in office. Did everyone just magically become more patriotic after 9/11?

Answer 1

*LOL* Have you not figured out that both sides are going to disagree no matter what happens? Neither side will ever say the other has accomplished something worth while. If they did, what would they have to campaign on? Their own merits or ideas? Now that would be funny.

Answer 2

Not all Republicans were "dissenting." Bush actually supported Clinton against the Serb Reich in Bosnia & Kosovo, and there were others that I can't think of right now. The only problem was that Clinton used to wait until the situation got way too desperate to take any military action.

Answer 3

Your memory is lacking. Republicans in those days were saying "support the troops" even though they might not have agreed with the use of the troops in Kosovo. In the same way, the real conservative Republicans STILL are saying we should support the troops, even though Iraq was a place we never should have gone. Sadly, a lot of Republicans don't think for themselves, and just follow whatever the party leader tells them. Perhaps others truly believe that going to Iraq was the best strategy, but I can't really believe that.

Patriots ARE supposed to dissent, and many of us are. However, that doesn't mean we can't support the troops. Regardless of how you feel about the decisions made in Washington, our troops are risking their lives in defense of our nation. I wish they were doing it somewhere strategically more sensible than Iraq, but they're still doing their very difficult job well, and I still support them.

Answer 4

clinton had a load of our troops knocked off. Remember Black Hawk Down--and I don't mean the movie.

As one Air Force Col. put it, if clinton was held to the same standards that any officer is held to in our military, he would have been brought up on charges of treason.

No surprise that clinton hated the military. (Needless to say how his wife feels about it.)

When clinton was running for office, bill, he stated that he would not go after the military vote because he knew that majorly of the people in uniform were Republicans. In fact, over 85% of our military vote Republican.

In spite of the war, over 80% of our armed forces still vote Republican. Ponder that!

To show his hatered for our miltary because of it, he reduced the retirement pay from 50% to only 30% for doing 20 years of service. Today, a person has to do 40 years of service to get what they could have got before him in only 30 years.

It's no suprise that he didn't take a retirement pay cut.

The differents between old school Democrats verse new school "d"emocrats is: the new school today would have told the old school that they should be running on the Republican ticket for not being liberal enough. Old school wouldn't have supported (and still don't, what few are still alive) half the junk the democrats of today do.

Answer 5

If war is going on there are always going to be people who think it shouldn't be. Sometimes tough decisions have to be made that are not very popular. And it's funny but there is not an administration that hasn't had a war. Some of them were secret. But there seems to have always been a war. It may have been a cold war or a hot war or a secret war but it was a war. War on Drugs , we sent troops into South America on secret missions. Cold War yeah like we didn't have out right battle but we had people dying. Come on people in the world we live in there is always a war going on. And the US is always involved in one way or another.

Answer 6

Because Republicans don't have to pretend to support the troops - we always have and always will. That's a given. And considering the overwhelming majority of military members are self-identified as conservative, then it shows we support it by joining, too.

There was great debate about Bill & Maddy's legacy-seeking adventures in Serbia & Kosovo, but once the vote was in, we supported the troops by supporting victory. Even though Clinton's "thousands of dead in mass graves" was an out and out lie. Even though Clinton's absurd tactics caused significant and unnecessary civilian casualties.

I disagreed with Clinton's cut & run after his "Black Hawk Down" mission went awry, especially when we learned that he'd denied his military commanders' requests for armor for that mission. The GOP leaders, like Dole, questioned him what his goals were, what reasons he was putting the US military into harms way.

Above all, many of us wanted him to do something about the terrorists and about Saddam, and were infuriated with his failure to take any action.

Clinton failed to take significant action because he was more concerned about being liked than about doing what served America's interests best. It was moral cowardice.

Answer 7

Uh short term memory skippy? I served under the commander in chief Clinton and there was a lot of support and there was a lot of dissent Just like present day Odd isn't it

Answer 8

Not to put too fine an edge on it, but President Wilson, a Democrat, presided over U.S. involvement in WWI.(53,000 dead) President Roosevelt, a Democrat, presided over U.S. involvement in WWII (292,000 dead). President Truman, a Democrat, presided over U.S. involvement in the Korean War (33,000 dead). President Johnson, a Democrat, presided over the bulk of the U.S. involvement in Vietnam (47,000 dead) (though Nixon inherited and ended it).

Wilson enjoyed reasonable support, though not entirely uniform. Roosevelt's public support was pretty strong. Truman's public support was divided, and Johnson's support, started strong and faded rapidly as the casualities mounted.

Still if one were to assess casualites, years at war and public support for war, in the past 100 years or so , the Democrats have been the party of war and have accounted for and have enjoyed the most support for their wars despite them accounting for 400,000 American soldliers' deaths. The Republicans, on the other hand have about 4,000 American soldiers deaths to their credit in the current conflict, and have uneven support for it at best, more often critical than not.

You may be against the current war for very good reasons. You may not be very fond of the Republicans for very good reasons too. That I acknowledge. Opinions vary. But your premise that Republicans are getting a pass of sorts that Democrats do not get simply does not bear up under much scrutiny historically.

Answer 9

There obviously was more patriotism after 9/11, but I have to say that War is never "okay". Sometimes it is unavoidable, but in the case of iraq it was avoidable, and when avoidable it should always be avoided.

Answer 10

People should keep in mind that the last war the US actually won, was by a Democrat President who made some really tough decisions and required actual sacrifice by Americans to succeed.

Instead of telling Americans to go to the shopping mall and buy items made in Communist China.