Bush got an honorable discharge; so what?
As Chicago Tribune Public Editor Don Wycliff relates in an interview with Ill. Rep. Bobby Rush, an honorable discharge is not ipso facto proof of satisfactory service.
Viz.,
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Last year I conducted two lengthy interviews with Rep. Bobby L. Rush (D-Ill.) for a profile in the Tribune Sunday Magazine. During more than five hours of conversation, Rush talked about his upbringing, his education, his family, his politics. He also talked in a remarkably honest way about his military career, which covered the years 1963 to 1968 and coincided with his political radicalization.
"I got a lot of Article 15s--disciplinary actions--because I was insubordinate," he said. And after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4, 1968, Rush says he "just didn't show up for work for about a week."
Despite all this, Rush, who now is a minister as well as a politician, received an honorable discharge.
"That's why I know there is a God, I know that Jesus is alive and the Holy Spirit is really working," he said, "because there's no way I should have been [given] an honorable discharge. I should at least have gotten a general discharge, because I was totally insubordinate."
I think about Bobby Rush and his refreshing candor every time I hear one of President Bush's spokesmen observe that he received an honorable discharge and so that should settle any questions about his service in the Air National Guard.
Well, OK. If that's how they want to think about it ...
But Rush isn't the only Vietnam-era veteran I've known who admits his honorable discharge covers a multitude of sins, most of them, happily, venial. That era, with its perfect storm of unpopular war, conscription, youthful rebellion and mass protest, was tough for the military.
I imagine there was many a commander who decided it was easier to overlook some things and muster a guy out with an honorable discharge than to go through the bureaucratic hassle of pursuing every disciplinary infraction. All the more so, it would seem, if the guy happened to be the son of a member of Congress.
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Viz.,
----------------------------------------------------------
Last year I conducted two lengthy interviews with Rep. Bobby L. Rush (D-Ill.) for a profile in the Tribune Sunday Magazine. During more than five hours of conversation, Rush talked about his upbringing, his education, his family, his politics. He also talked in a remarkably honest way about his military career, which covered the years 1963 to 1968 and coincided with his political radicalization.
"I got a lot of Article 15s--disciplinary actions--because I was insubordinate," he said. And after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4, 1968, Rush says he "just didn't show up for work for about a week."
Despite all this, Rush, who now is a minister as well as a politician, received an honorable discharge.
"That's why I know there is a God, I know that Jesus is alive and the Holy Spirit is really working," he said, "because there's no way I should have been [given] an honorable discharge. I should at least have gotten a general discharge, because I was totally insubordinate."
I think about Bobby Rush and his refreshing candor every time I hear one of President Bush's spokesmen observe that he received an honorable discharge and so that should settle any questions about his service in the Air National Guard.
Well, OK. If that's how they want to think about it ...
But Rush isn't the only Vietnam-era veteran I've known who admits his honorable discharge covers a multitude of sins, most of them, happily, venial. That era, with its perfect storm of unpopular war, conscription, youthful rebellion and mass protest, was tough for the military.
I imagine there was many a commander who decided it was easier to overlook some things and muster a guy out with an honorable discharge than to go through the bureaucratic hassle of pursuing every disciplinary infraction. All the more so, it would seem, if the guy happened to be the son of a member of Congress.
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