President Obama: Troops 'fighting on my behalf'

• Barack Obama
• May 10, 2012
• By: Joe Newby
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Arrogance: Barack Obama says troops are fighting "on my behalf."

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Members of the United States military may be surprised to learn that they now serve on President Obama's behalf, instead of protecting the Constitution.

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On Wednesday, Obama reverted to his 1996 position supporting gay marriage, but said something that caught the ear of many conservatives.
"[W]hen I think about those soldiers or airmen or marines or sailors who are out there fighting on my behalf and yet feel constrained, even now that ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ is gone, because they are not able to commit themselves in a marriage, at a certain point I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married," Obama said.
"Slip of the tongue, to be sure, but can one think of another president who’d have made it?" Elliot Abrams asked at the Weekly Standard.
Ben Shapiro weighed in on the statement at frontpagemag.com:

The members of the US military fight on behalf of all Americans, not Obama personally. Now, it’s possible that President Obama meant just that – he was expressing individual gratitude for a collective benefit we all receive from the military.

"Or," he wrote, "it’s possible that Obama thinks that the troops are out there carrying out his work."
Shapiro reminded readers that in 2009, Obama said the troops made a “pretty good photo-op” during a visit to South Korea.
"Obama seems to see the troops as his personal plaything," Shapiro added, recalling a statement last week where the President appeared to suggest he would transform the country on their behalf.
He went on to say that our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines "are a prop for Obama."
"They are fighting on behalf of the United States of America of which Obama is, like all his predecessors have been and all his successors will be, temporarily president and commander-in-chief," Michael Barone wrote at the Washington Examiner, adding that Obama could have said they were fighting "at my command," which would have been true.
"But that would conflict with his campaign message that he ends wars rather than wages them," Barone added.
Obama also seems to not understand that U.S. military personnel do not swear allegiance to one man, but rather promise to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution "from all enemies, foreign and domestic."
If the United States were a monarchy, as Barone wrote, or a dictatorship, then the President could say they are fighting on his behalf.
"But we're not a monarchy and he's not royal," Barone added. Nor is the United States a dictatorship.
"FDR, for all his ego, would never have said that soldiers in World War II were fighting on his behalf. Neither would Truman, Ike, JFK, Nixon, Ford, Reagan, or even Carter and Clinton (although Clinton might have thought it)," wrote Newsbusters' Tom Blumer, who added that he doesn't "expect to see a lot of TV air time devoted to this telling, egotistical slip."
"Others have noted that in his spike-the-ball statements on the dispatch of Osama bin Laden, Obama has used first person pronouns in a way that presidents like George W. Bush, Dwight Eisenhower and Franklin Roosevelt were careful to avoid," Barone wrote.
"With Obama, it’s always all about him," he added.