Motley Moose – Archive

Since 2008 – Progress Through Politics

Blue Star Families for Obama!

We are the Military Family.

Blue Star Families for Obama (BSF4O) started as a grassroots movement by Army and Marine Corps spouses, and it has expanded to include all active duty military family members who support Barack Obama for President.  Michelle Obama announced the formation of Blue Star Families for Obama on August 6, 2008.

Barack and Michelle Obama, along with Joe and Jill Biden, have actually listened to both our frustrations and cheers.  Michelle Obama has held roundtable discussions with many military families, and she has adopted our cause as a primary focus area in the campaign.  In just two short months, BSF4O has generated chapters in 24 states, helped to host a care package service event at the DNC in Denver with Michelle Obama, attended dozens of rallies and roundtable discussions about military family issues, and hosted house parties across the country.

Keep in mind, we admire McCain’s service to our country, but we cannot support his vision for our future in large part because of his continued refusal to provide real support to our troops, veterans, and the military community.

Check out The Master List by Brandon Friedman, an Iraq and Afghanistan veteran and Vice Chairman of VoteVets.org.  This list is a thorough, detailed compilation of all the ways that McCain has left behind his brothers and sisters in arms.

By repeating his status as a Vietnam veteran and former POW, John McCain indirectly uses all of our military members and veterans as job references to bolster his candidacy.  It’s a smart move because a recent Gallup poll shows that 71% of Americans have confidence in our military.  Conversely, only 12% of Americans have confidence in Congress.  McCain is part of both the military and Congress, and one of his more effective campaign strategies has been to distance himself from the Republican party and his status as 26-year veteran of the Senate – a much longer tenure as a Senator than he was as a military officer.

But McCain doesn’t speak for my military family and many other military families, and his suggestions and statements otherwise are misleading at best.  We in BSF4O have understood intuitively that the civilian communities around us look to our military status and devotion to our country as a bellwether for picking a good Commander in Chief.  Active duty servicemembers are prohibited from being openly politically active, but our military families are a strong vocal surrogate for what’s going on inside the ranks.  Things don’t look so good after 8 years of the Bush administration, so we’re speaking out.  EIGHT IS ENOUGH!

Our choice to support Obama is not only based on McCain’s lack of real support for our military community, but it is also based on Obama’s demonstrated commitment to serve us who so proudly serve the country.  

When Obama joined the Senate, he signed up for the Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs.  He co-sponsored the GI Bill for the 21st Century, which includes transferability to a spouse or child. Obama voted for the Lane Evans Veterans Health and Benefits Improvement Act, extending Tricare benefits and reimbursements, saving them from scheduled cuts that were tied to Medicare decreases.  Obama also sponsored the Veterans Suicide Study Act, and he will work to improve mental health care at every stage of military service.  He is also a sponsor of the Veterans Homelessness Prevention Act, which would authorize a pilot program within the Departments of Veterans Affairs and Housing and Urban Development to prevent at-risk veterans and veteran families from falling into homelessness.  These and many other actions demonstrate his real support in addition to his comprehensive plan for our troops, military families, and veterans.  

Obama has our vote of confidence to be our next President and Commander in Chief.  We invite you to join us if you have a loved one currently serving on active duty in any branch of our military and show your support as part of the Blue Star Families for Obama.


Categories: Uncategorized.

/ 15 Comments

15 comments

  1. GrassrootsOrganizer

    My son just returned from a tour in Baghdad in May.  I wish I could recommend this diary ten times.  I hope you will continue to write here on anything you want, but particularly on veterans and military issues!

    I have been outraged since the start of the Iraq war by the Bush Administration’s reckless misuse of the military and  its supporters’ exploitation of the troops to gain political points.  I haven’t forgotten the “Support Our Troops and President Bush” lawn signs and bumper stickers.  Bah!

    Now along comes McCain, with an abysmal record on veterans’ issues to exploit them again using his own military service.  The very people who support the troops the least are the same people who attempt to validate themselves through some purported special connection to them.

    When the McCain campaign tried to fabricate the “went to the gym instead of visiting the wounded soldiers” issue I was livid, given Obama’s solid record on giving recent veterans the specific help they need.  No candidate before Obama has dared to recognized the greatest shame of this country — veteran homelessness.  None has dared acknowledge PTSD and the rate of suicide.  Obama is the first with the courage to step outside of fabricated white-washed Norman Rockwell portrayal of military service to address the realities of it.  

    Throughout my son’s deployment, I was stunned by the ignorance of the average American towards the challenges faced by military families.  Ignorance is forgivable — exploitation is not.  McCain, above anyone else in this campaign, should understand the true nature of sacrifice and yet he shows not one indication that he does.  

    When McCain recently spoke of returning home with “dishonor” if the effort “fails” he disparaged the service of every military man and woman out there.  Their potential sense of honor or dishonor is not dependent on the actions of Washington — McCain needs some serious psychological counselling himself on his internalized “honor” issues if he still holds to that bullshit Vietnam era meme.  No.  Each an every serviceperson determines their own sense of honor based on their own performance and they are workmanlike and informed enough to recognize that.  What of the solider who spent his deployment changing the hearts and minds of every Iraqi individual he or she met?   What of those who well tended to or saved the lives of their comarades?  Are they to be “dishonored” now if our country can no longer afford to sustain the action?  I never heard such rubbish.  

    Vietnam veterans were unfairly ostracized and vilified (but not “dishonored”!) because of the horrors revealed about Vietnam — the carpet bombing, the napalm, the Agent Orange, My Lai and drug addiction — not because we “lost” the war or left too soon.  Today’s sevicepersons are well capable of understanding the seperation of failed policy from honorable service and sound command in the field.  They are professionals doing a dangerous, difficult and often thankless job — not John Wayne characatures in a WWII propaganda film.

    Thank you again for your diary. Well done!

  3. John Allen

    Well-deserving of front page status. I hope we see more from you on this subject, as well as others.

    It is groups like BSF4O and Vote Vets that have finally discredited the idea that if you are against the war you are automatically against the troops. This base canard has been used by pro-war groups for far too long to paint anti-war groups as anti-American.

    The multiple extended deployments that have been required of our armed forces are the direct result of mismanagement of the war by our civilian leaders. These deployments have caused far too large of a burden to fall on our service men and women and their families. It’s long past time for the rest of the country to step up and do their part.

  4. spacemanspiff

    John McCain says he speaks for all veterans — except when it comes down to voting for measures which are beneficial to them and their families.

    The way he tries to exploit the brave servicemen and women for his own cynical political beliefs is sickening.

    A very informative and inspiring post. I hope to see a lot more!

  6. Chris Blask

    (in one of the few places you can smoke and eat inside an airport anymore) and the Marine at the next table just left to catch a flight to Orlando on leave.  He’s just come from Kuwait, been in both Iraq conflicts.  “It’s just my day job.”

    I told him how my boss (another ex-Marine) and I had tried to go to a restaurant in Raleigh last night, only to need to go to the place down the block because there was an active hostage situation at the convenience store next door, and that for us civvies this is what we consider “risk” – the one-in-800,000,000 chance of a stray bullet coming our way – and we just can’t really understand what it is he and his folks do.

    “That’s why we do it, so you don’t have to.”

    I wish there was a real way to repay these folks.

Comments are closed.