Why don’t male veterans support President Obama?

Gallup’s headline for its recent poll of military veterans is misleading. Not all veterans - only male veterans - support Romney 58% to 34%. 

As a veteran of the U.S. Air Force (WAF), I was annoyed at having to read down a couple of paragraphs in Gallup’s report to find that women veterans support Obama 47 to 42.

Full disclosure: I served in the military for primarily one reason: I came from a poor family and hoped to attend college on the GI bill. 

Perhaps we should remind ourselves on Memorial Day that it is usually the poor who fight our wars. 

It was peacetime when I served, and I tuned out the “kill or be killed” indoctrination in basic. And I later took advantage of the education benefits to earn a BA degree.

Conventional wisdom has it that military personnel and veterans of the armed forces typically cultivate a macho culture. In that light, it’s puzzling that such a large percentage of the guys pick Romney over Obama, neither of whom has served in the armed forces. 

Surely, the Obama Administration has been more ruthless than the Bush Administration in its prosecution of war, incessant drone attacks - irregardless of civilian deaths - and take no prisoners strategy in dealing with terrorists.

On the other hand, although Obama’s attitude toward women can be condescending at times, he is more progressive on matters affecting women’s rights than Romney and company. Even so, women vets in this poll don’t give him much of a lead.

Read Gallup’s full report here:

America terrorizes others in its take no prisoners strategy in the war on terror

This photo released on Dec. 8, 2012 by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, claims to show the US RQ-170 Sentinel drone captured by Iran.

Katalusis readers already know how I feel about America’s current weapon of choice, the deadly unmanned Predator drone. This morning the CS Monitor reports the Obama Administration’s resumption of drone attacks in Pakistan after a brief hiatus following the NATO air strike in November that mistakenly killed 24 Pakistani soldiers. Ariel Zirulnick, Staff writer, reports:

A US drone strike killed a senior militant in northwestern Pakistan today, one of two drone attacks on suspected militants this week.

Pakistani intelligence officials and Pakistani Taliban members told Reuters that the strike in the town of Miran Shah killed Bador Mansoor, a leader of a faction of the Pakistani Taliban with close ties to Al Qaeda. At least three others were killed in the strike, which came on the heels of a strike yesterday that killed 10 people.

Mr. Mansoor led a group of more than 200 Pakistani Taliban fighters in North Waziristan (see map here), a key sanctuary for militants, an insurgent told the Associated Press. Intelligence officials said they could not confirm for the AP that Mansoor was among those killed in the strike on Miran Shah’s bazaar.

So we continue to kill off our enemies with these antiseptic air strikes that remove us from the messiness of human death and the complications that arise from taking prisoners and bringing them to trial.

And even though Iran recently captured one of our drones and may now be able to repair and replicate it for its own use, the Obama Administration continues to pursue this immoral use of force. 

Has it never occurred to President Obama or our military leaders that one day Americans may be targeted by a “made in the USA Predator drone?”