In another thread, Ex-GOPer mentions that he's (Edit & Repost)

[Jackpine Radical]

an active duty military pilot who has come to a change of heart in politics. This set me to thinking. Experiencing a war tends to get you down to issues of basic values, and liberalism is often forged in adversity. I know that I went to infantry duty in Vietnam with 4 years of college behind me and a "young fogy" conservative orientation (we didn't have the word "libertarian" in those days, but I was one anyway). What I saw and experienced in Vietnam was pretty awful. As soon as I got back into college after the army, I started getting the information I needed to understand the things I had seen in Vietnam, and I rapidly evolved into a leftist. Others also apparently went through a transformation due to the war.

Whatever torments the Gulf I vets are now suffering, they mostly fought a video-game war in which they didn't see much close-up carnage. Ditto with Kosovo.

Gulf II is the first war since Vietnam in which large numbers of American troops are having the kind of combat experiences of which post-traumatic stress disorder is born. I predict that it will also be the first war to flood the ranks of liberalism with its veterans. I think we're already starting to see this effect, with so many families beginning to protest what is happening to their sons and daughters.

Thoughts?


Edited to remove the name of a Democratic primary candidate