Focus on more important issues than “latte-gate”

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The controversy surrounding this supposed “latte-gate” scandal is ridiculous for so many reasons. It’s a constant reminder of how polarized our political discourse has become – that something like this would be taking up significant amounts of time on national media airwaves.

For starters, President Obama is once again being criticized for doing something another president has also done. President Bush routinely saluted troops with a dog in hand. Seriously, Google it right now, there are several photos of Bush saluting troops with his terrier Barney in hand.

This scandal is also ridiculous in that it isn’t about anything as noble as respecting our troops, which I am certainly all for. It’s about using anything and everything you can to attack those who stand against you politically.

Numerous conservatives like Sarah Palin have mocked the president by mimicking the coffee salute. First of all, why does anyone care what Sarah Palin has to say on presidential matters? If she ever were to become president (God help us if she does), she would likely not follow through with the salute anyway.

But the most disturbing part about this “scandal” is that everyone likes to play the “we love the troops the most” game, though few people actually back it up.

So sure, President Obama saluted the troops with a cup in his hand. Disrespectful? Perhaps. But you know what’s even more disrespectful? Sending troops to fight wars based on finding weapons of mass destruction that never existed, and then keeping them in that country for nearly a decade as we did in the Iraq war.

Blocking a $21 billion bill that would provide medical and educational benefits to veterans, as Republicans did earlier this year, that’s disrespectful.

Cutting $39 billion from food stamps, which are used by around 900,000 military households, is incredibly disrespectful to the troops. Guess which party pushed for this last year?

Leaving countless troops without proper mental health counseling after they return from the horrors of war, leaving them to self-medicate with drugs and suffer from suicidal depression at a horrendous rate, isn’t just incredibly disrespectful, it’s downright disgusting.

Now, I don’t mean to sound biased. Democrats share some of the blame in the botched efforts to take care of our troops as well. But in this particular situation, Republicans are trying to masquerade as if they always have the best interest of the troops in mind. And recent history has shown that this simply isn’t true.

As for President Obama, yes, he should have at least switched the cup to the other hand before throwing up that salute. But the idea that he is any less respectful than a president who salutes with a terrier in his hand, or a political party that sent our troops to a near-decade long war based upon faulty evidence and then refused to bring them home, which has since made many attempts to cut programs that benefit many veterans, is indeed ridiculous.

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