For those who believe that young war veterans, leaders in combat, make good legislators, the new Congress is just “the ticket.”
According to the Stars and Stripes, the new Congress to be seated later this month “will boast the largest number of Iraq War veterans ever.”
Six new House members who have served in Iraq (two of them in Iraq and Afghanistan)—all Republicans—will join two other recent war veterans: Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., who served with the Marines in both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and Iraq War veteran Rep. Mike Coffman, R-Colorado.
Three of the freshman representatives have already been appointed to the House Armed Services Committee.
The six new Representatives and their districts are:
– Lt. Col. Allen West (FL-22) – Iraq, Afghanistan, & Gulf wars
– Lt. Col. Steve Stivers (OH-15) — Iraq war
– Capt. Adam Kinzinger (IL-11) — Iraq & Afghanistan wars
– Col. Joe Heck (NV-3) — Iraq war
– Maj. Tim Griffin (AR-2) — Iraq war
– Col. Chris Gibson (NY-20) — Iraq war (4 tours)
One of the new Senators, Illinois Republican Mark Kirk, also served briefly in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Veterans groups and veteran legislators are pleased to have this new batch of war veterans serving in Congress. They hope that “that the influx of younger veterans … will help bring a new perspective to the legislative session, helping keep the focus on Iraq and Afghanistan even as financial reform issues dominate the headlines.”
The Stars and Stripes quotes Rep. Duncan Hunter as saying: “I think you’ll see the House Armed Services Committee become more of a war committee than it has been in the last few years … We need to be more focused on Iraq and Afghanistan. And we need to make the military a leaner, meaner fighting machine,” and Rep. Tim Griffith:
If you’ve been in the military, you can take policy proposals and think about how that change is going to play out, not from an academic standpoint but from an experience standpoint…It helps to understand what troops go through, what families go through on deployment. As someone who is still talking to those troops, that’s a perspective that can help across the board.
Finally, Florida Rep. Allen West, a retired Army lieutenant colonel, according to the Stripes “hopes to spearhead efforts to review the military’s rules of engagement in Afghanistan as soon as the new legislative session begins, calling some of the restrictions on battlefield troops unfair and unsafe.”
Even with these recent gains, the Stripes points out, the new Congress will have a lower overall number of members who’ve served in the military:
The percentage of veterans in the House of Representatives has dropped steadily since the 1970s, and only 87 of the chamber’s 435 lawmakers for the 112th Congress have served on active-duty or in the reserves.
While some Democrats may not be so pleased at the large influx of Republican war veterans, this writer, a veteran and a Democrat—in that order—has no problem with it.
We trusted these Americans to bravely serve and defend our country in far off battlefields, we trust them once again to serve and defend our Constitution and our people in the halls of Congress.
I fully agree with Rep. Duncan Hunter’s sentiments:
It’s always important to have those voices of the troops in Congress, and it doesn’t matter if you’re a Democrat or a Republican…The goal is to protect this country and project our power. So it’s great to have those who have fought overseas in Congress.
