Guardsmen have varied reactions to Kerry speech

Molly Ball

Friday, Sept. 17, 2004 | 9:19 a.m.

When Democratic nominee John Kerry told the National Guard Association that he would expand the military's active-duty forces, taking a load off the Guard's shoulders, Capt. John Ferguson, whose Iowa unit is headed for Iraq in the next few months, cringed.

"We're all here to serve," he said. "We expect to serve, and we're all looking forward to when it's our turn."

Kerry seemed to suggest that Guardsmen would rather not fight, an insulting implication, Ferguson and others said.

Guard members' reactions to the hard-hitting speech varied widely. While many found Kerry's tone offensively negative, others said it was bracing and honest.

Ferguson said he wasn't swayed by Kerry's depiction of Iraq and Afghanistan as deteriorating situations brought about by mistakes in planning.

"My brother's in Afghanistan right now, and I get e-mails and letters from him," he said. "He says they're doing great things over there."

But others were more receptive to Kerry's remarks. "I thought it was very candid and to the point," Col. Larry Kauffman of the Idaho Air National Guard said of the speech.

"Sometimes the truth is tough," he said. "I couldn't disagree with anything Senator Kerry said. We are spread thin, and the strain is on the National Guard and Reserve forces -- he's right."

Like President Bush on Tuesday, Kerry spoke to issues of special concern to Guard members, promising to expand their health benefits and to allow those who have served in foreign wars to retire earlier. He attacked Bush's proposed solutions to those problems as insufficient.

"He promised us many things of interest to us," said Col. Andy Salas of the New Mexico Air National Guard, who described himself as a registered Democrat. "Yet as a senator, he never made any attempts to introduce legislation along those lines. I'm questioning the sincerity of his appeal to the National Guard."

Salas said he had hoped for a more positive and "visionary" speech from the presidential challenger. "I was thinking I would give him a chance, but it (the speech) was a very disappointing attack on the commander-in-chief," he said.

Many Guardsmen declined to offer opinions about the speech, either because they disagreed and didn't want to show disrespect for the guest speaker, or because they agreed and didn't want to appear to be questioning the president.

Capt. Dawn Dancer of the Michigan National Guard refused to say which candidate she would vote for in November. But she said many Guard members' perspectives are shaped by their dual role in the military and in civilian life.

"The military is a very conservative organization, but our members are also worker bees -- they are in manufacturing jobs, they are teachers and nurses, or they are losing their jobs," Dancer said.

"Senator Kerry talks about the importance of taking care of homeland security, but also about taking care of our nation, the hometown America we live in every day," she said. "They're both equally important."