WHY PARENTS NEED KERRY AND HAGEL

 

Parents of children who will be military age soon, or grandparents who have children who are military age, should be hoping President Obama's nomination of John Kerry for Secretary of State and Chuck Hagel for Secretary of Defense sails through the Congress confirmation process.

Republicans in Congress and the Republican propaganda machine, Fox News, are pulling out all the stops to try and scuttle the confirmation of Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense.

Hagel, who is a former Republican Senator and was in the Vietnam War and has two Purple Hearts and still has shrapnel embedded in his chest, has vowed to cut the bloated Defense Department budget, and because of his experience as a combat veteran would do everything possible to keep the United States from entering another war.

Republican "chicken hawks" and Fox News have been beating the war drums in hopes of getting the United States into a war with Iran, Syria or North Korea.

Hagel, who knows it is harder to get out of a war than to get into a war, knows the military is stretched to the breaking point and we could not engage in another war without reinstating the military draft.

John Kerry, a Democratic Senator from Massachusetts and also a Vietnam war veteran with two Purple Hearts, a Silver Star and a Bronze Star, would use diplomacy in his capacity as Secretary of State to keep the United States from going to war like we did with Iraq when Vice President Dick Cheney lied to Congress and the American people about Weapons of Mass Destruction and Iraq's nuclear bomb capabilities.

Cheney's lies led to 4,700 young Americans killed in Iraq and another 70,000 seriously wounded and upwards of one million Iraqi citizens killed.

President Obama knows Republicans are in love with war for a variety of reasons, but Republicans are also opposed to their own children or grandchildren from enlisting in the United States military.

John Kerry and Chuck Hagel would be in the catbird seats to prevent the United States from going to war when our national defense is not threatened.

Any parent or grandparent with young children, who will soon be military age , should disregard anything the Republicans and Fox News say about Kerry and Hagel, but instead trust the common sense approach to war from two distinguished Vietnam War veterans.