Dedication to duty faded quickly
RHONDA CHRISS LOKEMAN
I took two oaths and that one would be more important at this time than being a senator. So I would leave and my staff and fellow representatives and other senators would pick up the slack. And the country would be better for it.
Missouri state Sen. Jon Dolan, major in the Missouri National Guard, March 2003
Congressmen William Lacy Clay Jr., Richard Gephardt and Henry Waxman want to know how Jon Dolan went from self-sacrificing Guardsman to privileged politician almost overnight. How was it that a day after arriving in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba last August, Dolan sought and later received permission to come home?
The Republican senator returned weeks later to help override several vetoes by the Democratic governor. His was the deciding vote that overrode the veto on concealed-carry legislation last September.
The three lawmakers want the Pentagon to consider the circumstances behind Dolan's Get Out of the War Free Card. Were favoritism and political pressures involved?
They sent a letter Jan. 29 to Department of Defense inspector general Joseph E. Schmitz and requested further inquiries into Dolan's actions and the military's. They have yet to get a response.
At a time when over 130,000 American troops are bravely serving in Iraq, it is important to ensure that all servicemen and servicewomen receive equal treatment, the congressmen wrote. These people certainly are no less deserving of special treatment than a state senator who seeks leave for political purposes in clear violation of the law.
Waxman and Clay are on the House Government Reform Committee where Waxman is ranking minority member. Clay and Gephardt are Missouri Democrats.
Their letter asks whether any other service member who knowingly defies a military regulation in order to return home to care for a dying parent or the birth of a child would receive the same leniency that the Defense Department in 2003 showed Dolan, who left for political reasons. These questions are being aired in the public interest. The core issue here, really, is about privilege and politics. At issue is who gets to easily work things out with the military and who cannot.
Dolan didn't respond to a request for an interview last week. But last month, he told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, I came home to do my duty to the Second District, which has a tradition of pro-life, pro-guns and low taxes.
Dolan left behind others with the Missouri Guard's 70th Mobile Public Affairs Detachment who, like him, were activated last August and under orders to remain so for at least a year at Guantanamo Bay, where alleged al-Qaida operatives have been detained. He left with permission, despite a Gitmo policy stating that service members had to have been there at least 60 days before being granted permission to leave. Dolan was looking for the exit the day after he got there.
For the record, Dolan at first claimed that no public or private interest group funds paid for his trip back home. But a U.S. Southern Command report, issued after a nearly four-month investigation, states that the cost of his travel was paid for, at least in part, by the Missouri Republican Party.
There may be many people who share Dolan's convictions, but there aren't many who share his political connections.
Once Dolan was back in Missouri, military officials notified him that he was in violation of a Defense Department directive that put limits on active duty service members who also hold elected office. Dolan told them he didn't share the opinion regarding his status and proceeded to vote anyway.
That led to a recommendation out of the Southern Command that Dolan be relieved of his command and demobilized immediately. The Defense Department admonished Dolan in a letter instead.
That's about the time that Clay, Gephardt and Waxman teamed up.
They said that if politicians like Mr. Dolan are allowed to flout the rules with virtual impunity, that not only affects those left behind in the war on terror but it dishonors the sacrifices they make.
Last summer Elycia Fine, a linguist stationed in Iraq with the 103rd Military Intelligence Battalion, 3rd Infantry Division out of Georgia, learned that her mother in Colorado had stage four cancer. She asked for compassionate reassignment. She was denied.
Her dying mother launched an e-mail campaign. That got her media attention and support from U.S. Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell. Campbell, a veteran, contacted a high-ranking Army official who agreed that the soldier should have been granted compassionate reassignment. Elycia Fine was sent to a base near her mother.
Many of our troops are told we are a nation at war and some, like Fine, are told that leave is nearly impossible to get.
Many active duty members of the National Guard serving in Iraq and elsewhere are making enormous sacrifices, missing the births of their children or the funerals of their parents, the three lawmakers wrote in their letter.
Many of them are. But Jon Dolan, who spent five months at Gitmo, isn't one of them. Now, isn't that special?
Rhonda Chriss Lokeman's column appears on Sundays.
To reach her, call (816) 234-4475 or send e-mail to lokeman@kcstar.com.
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