A few days ago, the PBS News Hour, which deserves, well -- a medal, for honoring the war dead each evening, was followed by a program on the Marines which I found unexpectedly compelling for many reasons, including the haunting faces I'd just seen

In it, several retired Marines spoke of the reality of war vs. the romance, and said that anyone who has been to war will do everything to avoid sending someone else off to war.

This brought to mind our current Commander-in-Chief and his blackguard Vice-Chief, who both cut-and-run when they were called to serve. And, by contrast, the Democrats such as George McGovern, Wes Clark, John Kerry and Max Cleland, who are all anti-war, but "warriors" in the lexicon of the Marines.

So how is it that these Democrats who fought the wars have come to be seen as the ones who are soft on terror, and the ones who ducked the war have come to be seen as the ones to fight it, at least long enough to bamboozle a nation into re-electing them?

Just as we allowed Karl Rove and the “base” to paint us into the corner of being anti-family (while many of them are single with no children or, like Newt Gingrich, working on their third marriages), we've allowed them to portray us as "not getting" the threat of terrorism.

-more by Susan Lenfestey

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