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American Politics’ Third Rail
Politics
American Politics’ Third Rail
J.D. Vance deserves praise for his approach to the Walz military service controversy.
Tim Walz, the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, exaggerated his military rank and decided not to deploy to Iraq with the unit he once helped lead. He made up combat experience. J.D. Vance, his Republican counterpart, called him out, leaning on his own record as a Marine deployed to bloody Anbar province during the Iraq War and actual experience outside the wire. It’s the latest chapter in America’s long, confusing relationship between politics and military service.
The relationship extends back to the Founders, who chose an actual war hero as the first president. Fast-forward to the postwar era, and the White House was home to multiple veterans, including actual combat vets such as Harry Truman, Ike, and John F. Kennedy. Vietnam took its toll, with the emphasis shifting to those accused of lack of service, predominantly Bill Clinton, who went to Britain to avoid the draft. Ironically, Clinton won against George H.W. Bush, a decorated veteran pilot of the Second World War.
But the real politics of service and holding office was again Vietnam-related, and again in the negative. John Kerry ran for president against George W. Bush (himself possessing a very dubious military service record, avoiding the Gulf War in an Air National Guard role his powerful father helped him secure), presenting himself as a war hero for having served with valor as a Swift Boat captain in Vietnam. Kerry was awarded three Purple Hearts, a Silver Star, and a Bronze Star, which turned out to not be enough.
A group calling themselves Swift Boat Veterans for Truth produced blindingly effective television ads claiming Kerry was a fraud, that he did not deserve the medals he won and the valor he claimed. Kerry tried remaining above the fray. He was, after all, a war hero, with the medals to prove it. His military record was defended by others, including Senator John McCain of Arizona, a former prisoner of war in Vietnam and one-time presidential candidate himself, who called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth “dishonest and dishonorable.” But the mud stuck to Kerry and contributed to his loss. “Swiftboating” became part of America’s political vocabulary.
Military service was again a campaign issue in 2016, when Donald Trump’s draft exemption for bone spurs was considered dubious and labeled draft-dodging. He went on to win. Trump’s exemption was not revived in the media in 2020, however, when he faced off against Joe Biden. Joe received five student draft deferments during the Vietnam War draft, the same number as Trump and Dick Cheney, and in 1968, when his student status was wrapping up, was medically reclassified as “not available” due to asthma as a teenager. Funny, despite having worked as a high school lifeguard and played sports.
Some 60 percent of men in the Vietnam generation took active measures to qualify for a deferment, while up to 90 percent of National Guard enlistments (domestic service instead of Vietnam) were draft-motivated. Bernie Sanders applied for conscientious objector status until he aged out of the draft. Mitt Romney received both student and religious deferments to avoid Vietnam. Trump’s (and Clinton’s, Cheney’s, Biden’s, Bush’s, Sanders’s, Romney’s, et al.) story is “surprisingly typical of his generation,” wrote one historian. In the end no Vietnam vet has been elected president, and three who dodged the draft were.
The Iraq/Afghanistan Wars cleansed America of Vietnam in many ways, at least as far as its view of the warriors went. In past presidential elections, Pete Buttigieg referred to himself as having “more military experience than anybody who’s come into that office since George H.W. Bush” and defended NFL national anthem protests by noting that “Trump would get it if he had served.” He claims he “put [his] life on the line” for those rights. Meanwhile, former presidential candidate Seth Moulton was a commander in one of the initial companies of Marines to enter Baghdad in 2003, returning for a total of four combat deployments. Tulsi Gabbard did two full tours in the Middle East, one inside Iraq. She volunteered to become the first Hawaiian state official to step down from public office to serve in a war zone, 10 years before Mayor Pete went to Afghanistan.
Vance served as a Marine in Iraq. Democrats criticized him for this, claiming in his role as a combat correspondent Vance was not “in combat” and thus has no right to be critical of others for their service, however far from the guns it might have been. The problem is that is not true. My own role in Iraq (I spent a year there with the State Department embedded with the 10th Mountain Division and others) was not dissimilar to Vance’s. I reported to the embassy in Baghdad about what was happening around me based on personal experience, escorted journalists into the field, and visited towns and farms accompanying the Human Terrain teams, anthropologists hired to better understand the hearts and minds of the Iraqis.
In each instance our missions were combat missions, designed to protect the people we escorted against the unknown factors we might encounter in the Sunni Triangle. More to the point, stationed at Forward Operating Bases as was Vance, I was mortared dozens of times, usually at night (a helluva way to be shaken from sleep). To claim none of that is the equivalent of real war experience, and to claim none of that gives one the right to evaluate the experience of others who ask to be evaluated, means not understanding the Iraq War and all it had to offer.
Which brings us to Tim Walz. As reported by The American Conservative,
Walz enlisted in the Army National Guard at the age of 17. During the course of his service, he did not enter combat, although he did deploy for six months to Italy during the invasion of Iraq in 2003. By 2005, he had served for 24 years and achieved the rank of command sergeant major. In February of the same year, he filed paperwork to run for Congress in Minnesota.
While some have claimed that Walz did not know about his battalion’s future deployment before his retirement—he retired some months before his unit was mobilized—in March 2005 his campaign released a press statement informing the public of his intention to continue his run for office despite a potential deployment to Iraq. The statement read, “As Command Sergeant Major I have a responsibility not only to ready my battalion for Iraq, but also to serve if called on. I don’t want to speculate on what shape my campaign will take if I am deployed, but I have no plans to drop out of the race.”
In May 2005, Walz retired from the Army National Guard two months later as a master sergeant, not having held the position of command sergeant major for a sufficient period of time to qualify for retirement at that rank. In August, his battalion was mobilized for Iraq, another soldier taking Walz’s place as command sergeant major of the unit.
Nothing to be ashamed of there except the lying. Walz never deployed into a combat zone, as he claimed in anti-gun ownership ads made as part of his gubernatorial campaign. Walz avoided service in Iraq by retiring. Walz retired a master sergeant, a lower rank than claimed at first in his campaign bio. Walz’ bio was later amended under criticism by Vance and others that it was inaccurate.
Accusing a 24-year veteran and former master sergeant of abandoning his troops is a serious insult in the veteran community. One influencer called for veterans to post pictures of themselves while deployed under the caption, “Me not being Tim Walz.”
Walz, like all veterans, faced choices, made choices, and now must live with those choices and be judged by them in new contexts. Vance correctly debates the statement that any military service creates civics lessons one just can’t get any other way, and calls Walz to account for his past statements. Vance did not go into the local VFW hall one hazy afternoon to start picking apart veterans’ tales of war. He instead judged a man who stood up and asked to be judged on his record. Vance’s actions are themselves an act of courage these days when critical thought on military service and politics is the third rail of journalism.
The post American Politics’ Third Rail appeared first on The American Conservative.
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