According to The Weekly Standard, the Obama administration is continuing to show its disdain for veterans and our fallen warriors.  When a group of veterans and families moved aside the barricades barring their entry to the Vietnam War Memorial, the police came and told them to leave.  I would be interested to know what the police plan would have been if a veteran had told them to get stuffed.

In case you thought it was only the WWII vets that were being disrespected, this is your clue as to where the rest of us fit when it comes to the Obama administration.

The Vietnam Memorial wall is one of the few places where a family or friend can go and touch the name of their fallen. That act alone is one that I have seen many times, and it never fails to be moving, both for the person doing it and all who observe it.  Many visitors leave gifts to the dead or notes to them, pouring their hearts out.  Keeping these people away from the memorial interferes with their need to honor and mourn their dead.  To me, it is a disgusting example of a petulant, small man lashing out because he is being defied.

President Obama did not need to have men guard these memorials.   He did not have to order barricades put up to keep us away. If a guard was truly needed and no money could be found to pay for it, there are many volunteers, from the American Legion, the VFW, or just Norwegians in Kentucky, who would have gladly stood guard.  He is doing this for one reason and one reason only: To punish his political opponents and to make the rest of the country hurt.

I am not holding either side of the argument in Congress blameless in this mess, but from where I sit, the reaction of the Executive branch to the impasse is indefensible.  It would not surprise me to find that it cost more money to put up barricades and man them with park rangers and police than it would have to just keep the memorials on normal operations.  President Obama is trying to put the screws to the Republicans in Congress by stabbing at the American people.  He has not offered, and I do not expect him to offer, a rational explanation for this.

I cannot say how the rest of the country will react to this, but as for me I have this to say:  I will never forget this outrage, and I will be very slow to forgive.  Heaven help him and his jackals if this impasse stretches out to November 11, and he tries to keep the large number of veterans who converge on the war memorials in Washington and Arlington National Cemetery away.  The National Mall is where we honor the people who founded and preserved our nation.  It is where we honor the dream of Dr. Martin Luther King.  It is where we remember our World War II, Korea, and Vietnam war dead, and we need only look across the river to Arlington to honor thousands more from the Civil War to Iraq and Afghanistan.

Those places do not belong to the President.  They are the property of the American people, and his efforts to keep us out of them is not leadership, it is spite.