J.D. Vance, Tim Walz, and the Incoherence of Veteran Worship
I don’t care if Walz “dodged” the Iraq War or if Vance “served” in it – and you shouldn’t either.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author, expressed in an unofficial capacity, and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Navy, Department of Defense, or the U.S. government.
Last week I implored people to recognize that the presidential “horse race” doesn’t matter all that much. I stand by that statement, but I must go against the spirit of it a little, since one aspect of the presidential race – or, in this case, the vice-presidential race – actually provides a very useful opportunity to discuss a long-overlooked defect of American political discourse.
I’m sure you’ve all seen that J.D. Vance and Tim Walz have been sparring over the latter’s military record. For those who aren’t caught up, here it is in a nutshell: both J.D. Vance and Tim Walz are veterans; Vance spent four years as an enlisted Marine, including a six month stint in Iraq in a public affairs (e.g., non-combat) capacity, while Walz spent twenty-four years as an enlisted National Guardsman before retiring in 2005. Vance has accused Walz of deliberately avoiding his National Guard unit’s deployment to Iraq. Specifically, he alleges that Walz retired in order to avoid going on the deployment.
This accusation is the latest in a long history of American politicians blasting their opponents for either evading military service (both Bill Clinton and Donald Trump were frequently derided as cowardly draft-dodgers for avoiding Vietnam), or exaggerating the nature of their service (recall the infamous “swiftboating” campaign against John Kerry during the 2004 election).1
The press has begun diligently investigating whether Vance’s allegation is true or not. To be honest, however, I’m largely unconcerned with whatever the answer turns out to be, because the issue is far less important than others which this situation should prompt us to think about.
To wit: what if the allegation is shown to be correct? What should we take away from such a revelation about Tim Walz?
I can tell you what Vance would like us to take away from it: that Walz is a coward for avoiding a deployment to a war zone, and that he is dishonest for hiding this aspect of his record, and thus unfit to serve as Vice President of these great United States, whereas he, Vance, proudly served his country in uniform and is thus a true American patriot, yadda yadda yadda.
And it seems that Americans of all stripes agree that, if the allegation is true, then it would indeed reflect very poorly on Walz. Vance’s supporters obviously think so, as do Walz’s, judging by the ferocity with which they’re struggling to refute the charges.
But it’s not at all clear to me, even if it’s true, that any of us should care even a little that Walz retired in order to get out of a deployment to Iraq. If he did, that was the sensible thing to do. Furthermore, it would not in any way have been shameful or dishonorable. I can tell you right now without any hesitation that if I were in an equivalent situation – twenty-plus years into my military career, with the option to either (1) retire with full benefits or (2) deploy to a war zone, I would not hesitate for a second to pick the former option – especially if, as was the case with Iraq, the war was based on lies and thus criminal and immoral.
And it’s precisely that issue – the morality of the conflict in question – that is completely missing from all the public discussion around this. Moreover, it’s completely missing from the stale, cliched language we use to discuss veterans and their military “service” writ large in America. The sound-bites and thought-terminating cliches we invoke in these conversations serve only to obscure glaring contradictions at the heart of conservative and liberal political ideologies – the ideologies which, taken together, sustain American empire.
Thank You for Your Service in This Criminal Endeavor
The Iraq War is not popular right now – in fact, it never really was. When the George W. Bush administration announced its intention to invade, the largest protests in human history erupted around the world. The American population was at first recalcitrant, and ultimately had to be bullied into supporting the war through a massive propaganda blitz, which “enlightened” them about Saddam Hussein’s involvement with 9/11, association with al Qaeda, and quest to acquire weapons of mass destruction – all lies, as everyone now knows.
The war was unpopular with liberal democrats, albeit largely for partisan reasons – it’s not hard for Democrats to oppose a Republican war, and vice versa. Leftists, on the other hand, opposed the war out of a principled commitment to anti-imperialism. They referred to the war as a crime, which it was – namely, it was the crime of aggression, which the Nuremberg Tribunal characterized as “the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”
Conversely, virtually every conservative supported the war at the time. Fox News and other reactionary outlets were its loudest cheerleaders (although the New York Times was arguably the most effective). Only a very small group of conservatives were skeptical of the Bush-Cheney crusade. Today, however, that “small group of conservatives” has become “almost all conservatives.” With the exception of a few frauds, sadists, and other National Review types, conservatives, despite having spent the Bush years burning Dixie Chicks albums and all but accusing John Kerry voters of being closeted Baathists, finally joined the rest of the world in agreeing that the Iraq War had been a disaster, even morally wrong.
The consensus among their ranks on this position became so rock-solid that by 2016, candidate Donald Trump was able to publicly berate Jeb Bush for his brother’s crusade. Eight years later, Trump’s VP pick J.D. Vance, despite – or possibly because of – his time in Iraq, agrees. “I saw when I went to Iraq that I had been lied to,” he said in a House floor speech this past April. “My excuse is that I was a high school senior. What is the excuse of many people who were in this chamber or in the House of Representatives at the time?” he asked.2
Despite this, Vance would like us to believe two things. First, he’d like us to believe that Americans who fought (or in his case merely participated) in Iraq nonetheless should be proud of their role: “When the United States of America asked me to go to Iraq to serve my country, I did it. I did what they asked me to do and I did it honorably and I’m very proud of that service.” Vance is hardly alone in this. Indeed, whenever they encounter military servicemembers, most Americans invariably trot out that ubiquitous refrain, “thank you for your service” – because they have been conditioned to believe that, whether they deployed to Iraq or anywhere else, veterans always deserve unqualified praise.
Second, Vance would like us to believe that those who found ways to avoid participating in the Iraq War are guilty of something shameful – this is the underlying message his attacks against Walz are meant to convey. And again, Vance is not alone in this belief, either. As mentioned, the reason Democrats are scrambling to rebut his accusations about Walz is precisely because they agree with him that avoiding service in Iraq would have been disgraceful.
And so we have arrived at the following position: that the Iraq War was a strategic error of historic proportions, as well as a lie and a massive crime that killed hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians and destroyed an entire region – and yet that we must also, without any qualification, praise the men and women who took part in it, while simultaneously direct withering scorn at those who chose to avoid doing so.
When seen in this light, the contradiction is pretty obvious – why would we thank someone for taking part in an illegal, criminal war? And why would we apply to such activity the lofty word “service?”
We can and should feel bad for Iraq veterans, of course. Vance is correct that, since he was a high school senior at the time, he should not be judged for falling for the WMD lies. He is also correct that those who were in office back then should be judged for this. We should be absolutely furious that the American government lied to the public to get them to support atrocities in Iraq, and that it recruited children that it brainwashed straight out of high school to go commit them.
But it makes absolutely no sense to thank them for that. This is why we should abandon the phrase “thank you for your service” – its ritualistic invocation encourages a complete lack of thinking with regards to the activity (military service) being praised. Not only should we as a society stop reflexively using this phrase, but we should also abandon the mindset of uncritical military worship of which it is a symptom.
Indeed, “thank you for your service” not only doesn’t make sense in the context of the Iraq War – it doesn’t make sense in any context.
Who (or What) is Being Served?
No one in the military “serves” their fellow Americans. And it’s pretty hard to make the argument that they “serve their country,” either, if by this one means the American public or the “interests” they may be said to have.
Consider post-World War II American conflicts and wars. Korea. Vietnam. Grenada. Panama. The Gulf War. Somalia. The Balkans. Afghanistan. Iraq. Libya.
If you truly believe that those who participated (directly or indirectly) in these conflicts were somehow “serving” their fellow Americans, or the American “national interest,” then you should be required to explain how exactly that worked. How did any of these conflicts “preserve American freedoms,” or “defend our way of life,” or “keep Americans safe?” Were “American freedoms,” to the extent that such things even exist, ever under threat in any of these situations? Were Vietnamese peasants threatening to invade the homeland? Was Serbia in possession of a Navy with which it intended to shell the East Coast? Was fucking Grenada a regional peer competitor with aggressive designs on the hemisphere?
Unless and until someone coherently explains how any of these conflicts had anything to do with benefiting or protecting the American population or landmass, it’s high time we stop “thanking” people for “serving” in them. Once we abandon such dumb phrases, we can start thinking critically about the true nature of these conflicts.
On that note, there is an exception to my argument. If you happen to be, say, the CEO of an oil company that got a contract to drill in Iraq after the destruction of Saddam Hussein’s government, then it makes sense for you to say “thank you for your service” to J.D. Vance and his fellow Iraq veterans, because they absolutely did serve your interests, and in a very concrete, literal way.
For those who think I’m kidding, make no mistake – I’m being deadly serious. For those who think I’m being offensive – don’t be a snowflake. This is the reality of military service and the class interests it benefits. As retired Army Major Danny Sjursen, a West Point graduate and combat veteran with tours in Iraq and Afghanistan under his belt put it, “Never, in any tangible sense, did we [American soldiers] act in vital American interests or make the world a safer place.” [emphasis mine]
Sjursen was writing as part of the storied tradition of military professionals who “figured it out” – that is, saw through braindead rhetoric around things like “service” and “God and country,” and were able to perceive the real interests they were “serving.” Perhaps the most famous example of this tradition was legendary Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler, who was even more blunt than Sjursen. In his appropriately-titled War is a Racket, Butler characterized his military “service” as having benefited only the wealthy: “I spent most of my time being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.”
So, if you fall into any of those categories, by all means thank veterans for their service. If, however, you are among the roughly ninety-nine percent of the population who does not own a controlling share of a mining firm or whatever, ditch the phrase.
We Didn’t Do It for You
When I was in talks to join NROTC as I prepared to head off to college, the only thing anyone really spoke to me about was the money. The Naval officers who convinced me to join were eager to tell me about the $8,000 per year I’d be entitled to, and I was very eager to hear about it. Notions of “service” barely came up.
But then, after I was admitted, I found myself, along with a few hundred other Midshipmen, in a lecture hall listening to our unit’s Commanding Officer giving a speech about precisely that. The CO repeatedly told us during his remarks that the only acceptable reason for embarking on the path we’d chosen was “the desire to serve your country as Navy and Marine Corps officers.” He did not once mention the financial incentive which was the primary reason virtually all of us were in that room. I was puzzled at this apparent contradiction.
I was not confused for long, however. I quickly learned – not because anyone ever told me, but just sort of through osmosis – that rhetoric around service to country and the like is how military leaders speak when they’re “on camera” – literally and figuratively. That is, when making a speech before a large group of people – especially civilians – they know to emphasize all the hackneyed stuff – “patriotism,” “sacrifice,” “love of country,” etc. But I’ve never heard anyone in the military speak this way in ordinary, day-to-day conversations. It’s pretty much universally understood that all of us are there for the benefits, whether it’s enlisted kids with no other options, or those from more affluent backgrounds who nonetheless appreciate that the military welfare state is a pretty good deal in our increasingly unequal economy. The free travel is also a bonus, since the overwhelming majority of us are not deployed to combat zones, but rather places like Italy, Japan, Germany, Bahrain, Hawaii, or, less exotically, bases within the continental United States.
Indeed, if you want to experience a functioning welfare state, and you happen to be American, the only way to do so is to join the military (unless you’re somehow able to obtain Norwegian citizenship or something). Unlike American civilians, who are subject to the Darwinian forces of the free market when it comes to housing, medicine, childcare, maternity leave, higher education, and other essentials, military personnel have access to something approaching Scandinavian-style social democracy.
Our housing is subsidized to the point of being free, or else is public (military) housing to begin with. And not only do we have what is essentially single-payer health care3 (which every other country provides their citizens as a matter of course), we also have – gasp! – full-blown state medicine. That’s right: conservatives who shiver at the mere thought of state-run hospitals (as are the norm in hideous totalitarian regimes like Britain) never seem to notice that one of their favorite institutions has been administering them for decades – and quite effectively. I’ve been treated in state-run (e.g., military) hospitals and clinics in places as far afield as Virginia, Guam, Bahrain, Italy, and Singapore, and in each instance was attended to exclusively by state employees – Navy doctors, Navy dentists, Navy nurses, and Navy hospital corpsmen. I never paid a cent, and I have no complaints about the quality of my treatment.
Furthermore, if I were still on active duty, and I had a child, I would be entitled to three months of paid maternity leave – yet another benefit most countries grant their citizens as a right but which Americans must join the military to receive. Furthermore, now that I’m off active duty, I’m using my considerable GI Bill benefits - I received 60% of the full GI Bill for putting in a mere nine months of active duty at a desk - to pay for my masters’ degree, which covers not just tuition but also rent and textbooks. When I’m done, I’ll have enough benefits left over to do another one, should I ever feel the urge. And this is coming after my steeply-discounted undergraduate education, courtesy of NROTC (had I gone to a federal service academy, my undergraduate education would have been completely free).
This is why people join the military – for the social safety net they can’t get anywhere else. And it’s yet another reason why it makes so little sense to thank them (us) for their (our) service. There’s nothing wrong with people doing what they have to in order to get access to benefits - benefits which, in any decently-run society, everyone would receive. But there is something wrong – or at least, something deeply strange – with thanking people for doing so. The idea that by pursuing welfare state benefits military personnel are somehow “serving” you or your fellow Americans is pretty odd. It would be like thanking someone for entering (and winning) the lottery – they didn’t do it for you, and you did not in any way benefit from it.
If anything, the vast majority of Americans not in the military are harmed by the existence of the military welfare state. Countless American political leaders openly admit that they oppose policies like tuition-free public college because it would negatively impact recruitment. Pretty perverse!
Of course, the tiny minority of military personnel actually engaged in fighting sometimes have additional motives for joining up in addition to the benefits, but these are hardly any better. Iraq War combat veteran Vincent Emmanuele succinctly captured the reasons his fellow soldiers had for enlisting. “Some of the guys I was serving with were looking to kill ‘sand niggers’ and ‘towel-heads’; others had joined to ‘defend the Constitution.’ Others had enlisted for college money and health care.”4
So the motives were either deeply disturbing (a desire to kill brown people) or fairly understandable (“college money and health care”) – but neither warrant expressions of gratitude from the broader populace, certainly not the first. Of course, it might be argued that “defending the Constitution” counts as a worthy cause, but as we’ve just seen, neither Iraq nor any of America’s post-World War II conflicts had anything to do with this, which is why Emmanuele places it in quotation marks – he doesn’t believe it.
These are the kinds of things we should be discussing when controversies around the military, veterans, and “service” arise. Instead, we prefer to stick to the cliches, because they paper over the glaring contradictions we’ve unwittingly adopted on a thoroughly bi-partisan basis. Furthermore, such heretical thoughts also expose the hollowness of some more overtly partisan orthodoxies.
“Small Government” Conservatives? Never Met One!
Conservatives and Republicans, ever concerned with the preservation of liberty, hold a deep, philosophical commitment to the honorable principle of “small,” or “limited” government. They are perpetually alarmed at the ever-increasing federal budget deficit, which they understand to be the consequence of unsustainable “entitlement” programs run amok. Consistent with this, they are on principle opposed to the liberal vices like “big government,” “the nanny state,” and spending “like a drunken sailor.”
All of this is – to use an academic term – horseshit. It’s a ruse, designed to trick reliably gullible Republican voters into supporting policies that run directly counter to their own interests. Conservative Republicans do not in any way support “small government.” Neither have they ever cared about the size of the federal deficit. Consider this – the only modern president to preside over the balancing of the federal budget was Bill Clinton.5 The record of conservative Republicans, conversely, indicates that they don’t believe their own ideology.
The presidencies of Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, and Donald Trump were all characterized by four things. First, gargantuan increases in federal spending, mostly on the military. Second, corresponding increases in the powers of the federal government, from warrantless wiretapping to policing to warmaking to immigration enforcement and beyond. Third, lavish tax cuts for the wealthiest sectors of the population, who not coincidentally fund Republican campaigns. Finally, each of these administrations insisted on the need to cut “entitlement programs” (read: Social Security and Medicare), which they shamelessly claimed had caused the ballooning deficits6 that were actually caused by their own military largesse and tax cuts. Each Republican administration inevitably engages in this same deceitful, tiresome, and above all obvious trick. Yet the Fox News crowd, in their permanent vegetative state, fall for it every single time.
All of this is to say that conservative ideology is self-contradictory on its own. But it also contradicts the bipartisan ideology of veteran/military worship we’ve been discussing. Historically, conservatives have been even more eager to embrace all-things-military than liberals – which is saying something. But this makes no sense given their supposedly anti-government beliefs.
In conversations around common-sense ideas like finally introducing single payer health care to the US, I have heard conservatives, in all apparent seriousness, make some version of the following argument – “do you really want the same organization [the government] that runs the DMV to run your healthcare?!?”
Put aside the obvious fact that two entities falling under the extremely broad category of “the government” does not make them “the same organization” (by this logic the CIA and public libraries are “the same organization”). Put aside the further obvious fact that these same people, upon turning 65, eagerly embrace precisely what they claim to deplore when they go on Medicare, which is just single-payer healthcare for seniors, excluding dental and vision.
Focus instead on the fact that conservatives would, if they were being consistent, have to answer their own hypothetical question with a resounding “yes.” After all, they love the military, and they really love the idea of young men and women volunteering to serve in the military, which amounts to serving the state. So, they may not trust “the same organization that runs the DMV” to run their healthcare (at least, until they reach age 65), but they do trust it to administer 800 military bases on six continents, the labyrinthine logistics network required to sustain those bases, and the six-or-seven simultaneous wars (covert and overt) such infrastructure supports.
This is wildly at-odds with a commitment to “small government” and “individual liberties” and the like. What could be more diametrically opposed to those than surrendering several of your rights7 in order to pick up a weapon and serve the needs of the state, which is what joining the military amounts to?
We also see this stark contradiction in areas closely related to the military – namely, policing. In his impressive study of the militarization of American police forces Rise of the Warrior Cop, libertarian journalist Radley Balko perceptively observes that “Conservatives had always held the somewhat contradictory position that government can’t be trusted in any area of society except when it comes to the power to arrest, detain, imprison, and execute people.” [Balko’s emphasis]
Ronald Reagan’s policies (to take one example) “embraced” this contradiction, since he “blamed crime on big government – and in the same breath demanded that the government be given significantly more power to fight it.” Displaying that quintessentially conservative reverence for the American Constitution, Reagan pushed for “allow[ing] soldiers to both arrest and conduct searches of US citizens,”8 among other brilliant innovations.
And I’d be remiss not to mention that in everyday civic life, conservatives hate the government so much that they demand every single child begin each school day by snapping to attention and pledging their allegiance to it. Political scientist Michael Parenti has argued that conservative propaganda thus “implicitly distinguishes between government and state,” since it depicts “government as [people’s] biggest problem,” yet simultaneously “encourages an uncritical public admiration for the state, its flag and other symbols, and the visible instruments of its power such as the armed forces.”9 Indeed, we’ve all seen that when it comes to issues surrounding, say, the American flag – recall the embarrassing shrieking that conservatives collectively engaged in during Colin Kaepernick’s protests – that conservatives become so hysterically unhinged in their devotion to the state that their actions would make the most ardent North Korean blush.
Worship of the military, along with the worship of the idea of military service, are completely at odds with the values conservatives claim to hold (as is their fetish regarding the police, the other armed wing of the state). Someone should point this out to J.D. Vance the next time he panders to a crowd by invoking his time in the Marine Corps, or to Donald Trump the next time he calls for a military parade to showcase his “beautiful generals.”
Liberals Do Like Guns – As Long As They’re “Over There”
J.D. Vance actually made a second allegation against Tim Walz. In addition to accusing him of deliberately avoiding deployment to Iraq, he also accused him of “stolen valor.” Generally, this refers to people who’ve never been in the military pretending otherwise, but Walz obviously was in the military. Vance is instead accusing him of falsely claiming to have been in combat. The accusation is based on brief comments Walz made in 2018 during his campaign for governor of Minnesota, while talking about his support for gun control legislation. Here’s the line Vance based his claims on:
“…and we can make sure that those weapons of war that I carried in war is the only place that those weapons are at.”
Vance has noted (correctly) that Walz was never in a combat zone, and thus argues Walz’s claim to have carried weapons of war in war is a clearcut case of lying about his service record. Walz very well may have been lying in order to convince his audience that he’d been to war, although it’s at least possible that he simply misspoke. Either way, I don’t much care, and neither should anyone else, because once again, Vance’s fixation misses the forest for the trees.
The point Walz was making, in context (full clip here), was that weapons of war do not belong in American streets or schools, but that they do belong in American theaters of war. He invoked military experience to add credibility – “I know better than anyone what these weapons can do, therefore I know better than anyone that they don’t belong in the hands of American citizens,” was essentially his argument.
This is a frequent refrain invoked by liberal-leaning people, especially those with military backgrounds. It’s most common in the immediate aftermath of a mass shooting - which means we hear it endlessly. For instance, following the Orlando Pulse nightclub shooting, Massachusetts Democratic Congressman Seth Moulton tweeted, “I know assault rifles. I carried one in Iraq. They have no place on American streets.”
There are countless other examples of the #VetsForGunReform trend.10 A few typical ones:
· a former soldier tweeted out a picture of himself with his service weapon, and wrote, “This pic was taken in Iraq. I needed a reliable high capacity rifle that could kill multiple humans accurately up to 500 meters away. I do not live in Iraq anymore. As a civilian, I no longer need the killing power of a weapon of war. None of us do.”
· “As a soldier, I wielded a rifle that could hit targets out to 500 meters. Its sole purpose was/is to take as many human lives as efficiently as possible. As a civilian now, I see no need for any of my fellow citizens to have unfettered access to similar weaponry.”
· “I do not live in Bosnia anymore. As a civilian I no longer need the killing power of a weapon of war. None of us do.”
· “As a former soldier, I have fired an M-1 tank, an M-3 Bradley, machine guns and semi automatic weapons at other human beings in combat. These are weapons of war and should not be owned by civilians. I support a ban on all and have informed my representatives of such many times.”
Perhaps the most extreme example is an article from the progressive-leaning outlet Salon, “How about you join the Army if you want to shoot guns.” The author, a West Point graduate with a long career in journalism, is admirably candid:
Go down to your local recruiting station and join the fucking Army. They’ll give you a rifle for free, and all the deadly ammo you want, and they’ll train you with human silhouette targets, and they’ll send you over to Afghanistan, or Iraq, or Syria, or Niger, or some fucking hellhole where there are guys with guns very similar to yours who will be good enough to shoot at you, so you can shoot back at them and kill them, and then if President Trump feels like it, he’ll order up a big fancy military parade for you, and you’ll march down Pennsylvania Avenue. Meanwhile, put your goddamned R15 VTR Predators in a gun safe somewhere and stay the hell away from our schools, movie theaters, concerts and churches.
Quick aside: note that this “liberal” Salon author, in referring to sites where American violence is exported as “hellholes,” sounds an awful lot like Trump calling those same places “shitholes,” for which he was justly chastised. Almost like there’s not much of a difference!
In any event, liberals, particularly liberal veterans, argue that American civilians should not own high-powered weaponry designed to kill vast numbers of people. I don’t necessarily disagree, but the problem with their logic should be obvious – it implicitly suggests that while “weapons of war” have no place in our schools, where they can and are tragically used to kill American children, they do have a place “over there” (Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia, etc.). Journalist Nima Shirazi pointed out the absurdity:
Who are they [deployed military personnel] pointing these AR-15s at? Whose bodies are they shredding with them? They know the killing power of these weapons. They have been trained to use them. That’s saying how these weapons are made to take out multiple people at long range. They don’t belong on American streets…but they also don’t belong on Iraqi streets.
As long as mainstream liberal types refuse to make the connection between the violence America exports “to Afghanistan, or Iraq, or Syria, or Niger, or some fucking hellhole,” their condemnation of violence at home – in the form of either mass shootings or police murders – will continue to ring hollow. It’s inconsistent to believe that American children shouldn’t be massacred with assault weapons, but that it’s ok for children “over there” to suffer the same fate (recall, to take just one example, Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher’s storied career deliberately shooting children).
Liberals who hate guns, but who love the military and those who “serve” in it, should be forced to wrestle with that contradiction. And they should be deeply troubled that a disproportionate number of mass shootings and police shootings are committed by military veterans. The reason for that should be obvious.
Another thing that should be obvious: the huge discrepancy between calling cops and mass shooters “murderers” when they kill Americans, despite having “thanked them for their service” when they engaged in the same behavior overseas. An expansion of the liberal moral imagination is what’s needed here.
***
So, when you are inevitably forced to listen to J.D. Vance and Tim Walz arguing back-and-forth over the former’s allegations about the latter, remember: in the grand scheme of things, they don’t matter. What matter’s is the context in which the accusations are made.
Why was Tim Walz’s National Guard unit deployed to Iraq at all? Why were any Americans in Iraq? And why do we think that we must thank them for having been there, when we all agree that they shouldn’t have been? Why do we like it when they use guns “over there,” but not here at home? And why does none of this ever come up during these interminable election cycles?
Food for thought.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author, expressed in an unofficial capacity, and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Navy, Department of Defense, or the U.S. government.
In fact, there’s a probable connection between the swiftboating campaign against Kerry and Vance’s attacks on Walz – both appear to have been masterminded by the same person. At least, that’s what the New York Times has implied: “A key strategist behind those [swiftboating] attacks, which helped doom Mr. Kerry’s bid for the White House, was Chris LaCivita, who is a senior strategist for the Trump campaign.”
Of course, this does not mean Vance is an exemplar of “realism and restraint” – quite the opposite. Like virtually everyone in the DC uniparty, he is a major backer of Israel. And while he is opposed to the proxy war in Ukraine against Russia, this is because he thinks we should prioritize conflict with China.
I recently had a conversation with a mid-level officer in the Navy reserve whose sole reason for “staying in” was “for the healthcare.” This is very common. Once he’s done 20 years (he’d put in 17 by the time of our talk), he’ll be entitled to Tricare for life, never having to worry about the wretched association between health care and employment that every other American is burdened with.
Emmanuele, Vincent. “From the Rust Belt to Mesopotamia,” in Paths of Dissent: Soldiers Speak Out Against America’s Misguided Wars; edited by Andrew Bacevich and Daniel A. Sjursen. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2022, 149.
Of course, as the economist Stephanie Kelton lays out in her book The Deficit Myth, deficits aren’t actually harmful – or at least, not in the way we’ve been conditioned to think that they are. Indeed, she notes that Clinton’s budget surplus actually caused a major problem by eliminating the market for US government bonds, leading investors to demand a return to deficit spending.
It should be obvious that Social Security, which is funded through payroll taxes, not federal spending, has by definition never contributed a single cent to the deficit.
The military adheres to a separate, much more restrictive legal system than civilians: the Uniform Code of Military Justice, or UCMJ.
Balko, Radley. Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America’s Police Forces. Revised and Updated edition. New York: PublicAffairs, 2021, 132-133.
Parenti, Michael. Against Empire. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1995, 145.