[Peace-discuss] A Republican military

Fri Oct 8 10:33:47 CDT 2004

[This was in this morning's Boston Globe. --CGE]

Support for Bush overwhelming at Marine Corps base

By Thanassis Cambanis, Globe Staff | October 8, 2004

FORWARD OPERATING BASE KALSU, Iraq -- It is a measure of President Bush's
unassailable popularity among the US Marines on this base that the only
one who admitted that he supported John F. Kerry would say so only on
condition of anonymity.

The 19-year-old private said he recently bought a copy of the film
''Fahrenheit 9/11," which questions Bush's rationale for going to war.
''If half the things in that movie are true, we're here for the wrong
reasons."

With that exception, Marines freely boast that the Corps is Bush country.

''I think 'W' is the man," said First Lieutenant Andrew Thomas, 25, who
still has not signed up to get his absentee ballot at Forward Operating
Base Kalsu, an hour's drive south of Baghdad.

But Thomas said he had told one of his fellow Marines to remove a
Bush-Cheney 2004 bumper sticker pasted on a Humvee on the base. ''We all
want him to win, but that's wrong," Thomas said. ''The sticker's got to
go."

The ease with which on-duty enlisted Marines discussed politics, and the
near-uniformity of their views, exemplified the extent to which the
military vote has become Republican since the draft was eliminated in
1973.

Studies that track political attitudes in the military indicate that the
officer corps has historically been far more Republican than the general
population at large, and that gap has grown in the last two decades.

According to a 1999 study by the Triangle Institute for Security Studies,
a consortium sponsored by three North Carolina research universities,
Republicans outnumbered Democrats in the officer corps by a ratio of 8 to
1. By comparison, the general civilian population has a roughly equal
proportion of Republicans, Democrats, and independents, according to the
group.

Richard H. Kohn, formerly the chief historian of the Air Force and a
professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,
was one of the authors of that study and said the gap appeared to be
growing.

Military officers since the Vietnam War have perceived the Republican
Party as more in tune with their values and interests, Kohn said, and many
exhibited a ''visceral, personal dislike for Bill Clinton."

In the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, headquartered at Base Kalsu, the
enlisted ranks appear to be following the same trend.

''It's the military; people are going to vote for Bush," said Lance
Corporal Rick McClusey, 19, who said he seeks out political debate with
fellow Marines.

An avowed Republican, McClusey said he avidly reads the books he receives
in the mail every month from the Conservative Book Club. The last one he
read was ''The Official Handbook of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy" by
Mark W. Smith.

He was the first in the unit to sign up for an absentee ballot, with
Captain Leigh Dubie, a 20-year Marine veteran who serves as the voting
officer at the base. Marines and soldiers on the base give Dubie absentee
ballot forms, and she helps anyone who needs to register to vote or get
their ballot on time.

About 200 people on a base of about 2,000 have voted so far, she said, but
that number only includes military personnel who did not organize their
own absentee ballots.

''This is the first year that people are jumping at the gun to vote,"
Dubie said.

Before the 24th Marines deployed to Iraq in July, Dubie tried to get
people to fill out ballot paperwork so they would not have to worry about
it under the stress of combat.

''I told them if you want a voice in how the military is going to be in
the future, this is your chance," she said.

Asked whether she expected Kerry to have any support, Dubie laughed.

''We crack jokes about that," she said. ''People say, 'We want to make
sure we even have a military in four years, so we better vote for Bush.' "

McClusey -- the first in the unit to request his absentee ballot from
Dubie -- said the nearly-uniform support he had encountered for Bush over
Kerry did not translate into unanimous support for the invasion of Iraq.

''Even if the decision to come here was questionable, at least he had the
guts to come over here," he said.

Adding that ''I know I sound like a medieval conservative," McClusey said
he had only met one Democrat during his nearly 16 months in the Marines.

Standing near him in the operations center, Jamie Tyson, a 35-year-old
Marine, interrupted. ''I voted for Clinton twice," he said. Tyson, who
described himself as an independent, also said he had voted for both
Bushes and plans to vote for the president's reelection this year. ''I
picked the winner every time," he said.

Of Bush, he added, ''People may question his strategy, but no one
questions his commitment to the military as a whole."