Virginia?s Military Families Will Play Large Role on Election Day

Mitch Biggs shakes hands with President Reagan after receiving his diploma.To Air Force veteran Mitch Biggs, Obama has misstepped in military-heavy Virginia.

"President Obama is a great campaigner, not a great commander," Biggs writes in a first-person account for Yahoo News.

That's a key distinction in Virginia, home to 822,000 veterans, or about 13 percent of its adult population. Presidents seeking re-election must carry a record that trumps rhetoric, Biggs explains.

Obama's strategy fails troops on four key issues, he says: the handling of the war on terror, information leaks to the media, ignoring fallen comrades and using the military for political expediency.

And Biggs says the president will suffer in Virginia on Nov. 6 for those miscalculations, writing, "Romney is still a contender. The unease of defense cuts is weighing heavy on the hearts of Virginians. The debates will allow Romney to accentuate his executive prowess, which will resonate with Virginians -- especially military and defense contractors."

Biggs is one of several Virginian military veterans and family members who shared their thoughts on the presidential race with Yahoo News this week. While their perspectives are partisan - something to be suspected in a state in which Obama leads by only 0.6 percent in an aggregation of polls - they say their allegiances are more tied to the president's performance than to how they perceive GOP challenger Mitt Romney.

Biggs, a former F-15 pilot says that in 1998 -- 14 years into his 20-year military career -- he lost faith in his commander-in-chief, Bill Clinton. That same skepticism is mirrored in this year's presidential election.

"I found myself questioning the competence of the commander-in-chief," said Biggs, who is in his late 30s and lives in Glen Allen, a Richmond suburb. "I strongly believe today's military leaders are contemplating the same decision."

Charity AyresSupport the military? Then trim the fat and cultivate a lean and efficient military, advises Navy veteran Charity Ayres.

Ayres, a mother of two who is married to an active-duty sailor in Hampton Roads, says Obama shouldn't be derided for cutting unnecessary or bloated programs.

"Areas of our military have become fat and lazy," she says. "[Obama] wants to ensure that the funding received by the military is what is needed instead of a surplus. As a woman who spent time in the military, I know there is a lot of fat to be trimmed in several areas."

While her backing of Obama on other military matters (for instance, the repeal of don't ask, don't tell, and an aggressive timetable for withdrawing troops), is the focus of her support, Ayres says she isn't a one-issue voter. Outside the military, she gives the president kudos for handling a difficult economy and for his stance on women's issues, specifically reproductive health.

"Into his lap fell a failing economy, a war that many people didn't support or want and jobless rates climbing while [housing prices] dropped," writes Ayres, who served from 1995 to 2003. "He was plopped down in the center of a raging storm without an umbrella and a million fingers waiting to point to him as the reason for their misery."

Obama's addresses to military crowds are more than misguided, says one veteran. They're "insulting," writes Air Force veteran Robert Sacchi, who believes the president concentrates too much on talking up what he's doing for service members' benefits.

Robert Sacchi"I did not join the military for pay or benefits. I joined the Air Force because I believed in the Air Force," Sacchi writes. "I wanted to be part of what I believed to be the most important arm in the U.S. military. I know others believed in the Air Force as I did. I know there are those who served and are serving in the U.S. Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard who believe that about their service."

Obama should focus instead on on-the-ground theater operations and military technology, says Sacchi, who served as a computer operator from 1972 to 1992. Sacchi is specifically disappointed that the president slashed F-22 jet production, and he's concerned about unstable global hotspots.

"When Obama took office, our losses in Iraq were declining and our losses in Afghanistan were increasing. The continuing losses in Afghanistan, including 27 combat deaths in September, indicate while President Bush's surge in Iraq succeeded President Obama's surge in Afghanistan failed."

Katie Farrar, a military spouse in her mid 40s whose family recently returned to Hampton Road after serving overseas, says she could spot the effects of a declining economy and defense budget cuts immediately after landing stateside.

In particular, she points to the August 2011 closure of U.S. Joint Forces Command, which managed and coordinated troop deployments and employed 2,800 service members - including her husband.

Farrar grew up in Hampton Roads, which she dubs a "military-saturated region," and recalls fears about the area's vulnerability to attack. But now she worries the biggest national security threat is multi-billion-dollar budget cuts, growing debt, higher unemployment, ill-equipped troops and a small military force.

"I'm no politician, but common sense tells me this plan is setting us up for peril," Farrar, who backs Romney, says . "How is our national security to remain stable when we downsize our worldwide military capability and compromise our homeland security?"

She says thousands of Virginia military jobs will be endangered and, more generally, the economic strength of military cities will decline.

"Our military should be able to meet the demands when called to defend this country. How can we ask that of them when we excessively limit their capability to do so?" she asks.

For Kiesha Bowles and her husband, Dustin, it was a tumultuous start to their marriage.

Kiesha Bowles and her husband, Dustin.They eloped the day Dustin graduated from basic training and spent two days together as newlyweds before the Army shipped Dustin to Schweinfurt, Germany. It was five months, in the late summer of 2006, before she saw him again. Then, just two weeks after she joined him in Germany, he left on a 12-month deployment to Iraq. Shortly after, she discovered she was pregnant with their first child. Amazing news turned to heartbreak, she says, when his deployment was extended another 15 months.

Such is life in the military, she acknowledges.

"The birth of our son was far from the joyous experience we had imagined," writes Bowles, who is supporting Obama. "We pictured him there by my side, but instead, the day that our son was born, Dustin was on a Humvee in the middle of a war zone, not sure if he'd ever make it home. He got a Red Cross message, a three-minute phone call to my hospital room, and when he finally met our baby face to face, he was 6 months old and terrified of this stranger who was calling himself Dad."

Dustin, according to his mother-in-law, saw violent combat at close hand in Iraq, including a grenade attack that killed people walking directly behind him and nearby landmine explosion that killed two fellow soldiers. Bowles says her husband returned home with post-traumatic stress disorder, and they spent the following year in marriage counseling and on the brink of divorce.

But life started improving, Bowles said, when Obama took office and unveiled specific policies to help veterans. She writes:

"He started the end of the war in Iraq, sending thousands of troops home to their families. He also ended the stop-loss policy, which had previously held many soldiers past the end of their enlistment contracts. He revoked the requirement for veterans to provide documentation of their traumatic experiences, making it easier for soldiers suffering from PTSD to claim benefits; and most importantly, during President Obama's time in office, Osama bin Laden was killed, giving our family closure that our struggles weren't in vain."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/virginia-military-families-play-large-role-election-day-230500344.html

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