Editor, Times-Dispatch -
A recent editorial ("The Vet's Choice", 11/4) exhorts veterans and those with veteran's issues in mind to ignore the prior combat status of the two candidates for U.S. Senate, and heed the choice of the Veterans of Foreign Wars: Senator George Allen. The editorial does an admirable job of painting the VFW as the epitome of non-partisanship, endorsing only the candidate most repsonsive to their agenda.
Is this the same VFW, then, that refused the standard candidate questionnaire to House candidate Tammy Duckworth, a Major in the Illinois National Guard and a woman who lost both legs in Iraq? Is it the same VFW that, without input from either the candidate herself or the local VFW groups in her district, endorsed her Republican opponent, who never served? It is a mistake to conflate these political action committees with the sentiments of actual veterans.
If the VFW thinks that George Allen, a man who spent his youth throwing interceptions at U. Va, would be a better advocate for veterans than Jim Webb, a veteran of a foreign war himself and father of a son in Iraq, then I'm not so sure the "non-partisan" label fairly applies to them.
Let's let veterans vote their consciences on November 7, instead of their national lobbying groups doing it for them.
- Corey Mull, Richmond