AWOL Bush Ignored Direct Order

Turns out Bush' moral cowardice has guided him all along

The new revelations about President Bush's shirked Air National Guard service will continue the campaign debate about physical bravery. But with Bush, the real issue isn't physical bravery but moral cowardice.

http://thehill.com/marshall/090904.aspx

We have a more immediate sense of what physical bravery and cowardice are. In fact, when we speak of bravery and cowardice, the physical variety is almost always what we're talking about. It's whether or not you can charge an enemy position while you're being fired at. It's whether you're immobilized by the fear of death.

Moral cowardice is more complex. A moral coward is someone who lacks the courage to tell the truth, to accept responsibility, to demand accountability, to do what's right when it's not the easy thing to do, to clean up his or her own messes. Perhaps we could say that moral bravery is having both the courage of your convictions as well as the courage of your misdeeds.