There’s a particular kind of sadness and fury in my gut as a member of a military family after hearing the news that Commander in Chief, Donald Trump either did not know or did not respond to intelligence that Putin’s Russia paid bounties to the Taliban for killing American soldiers in Afghanistan.
Here’s what it means if you have a loved one with multiple deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan. We say a prayer every night at the dinner table. I scan the online app for the locations of the latest casualty report. Relieved that it was another part of the war zone, apparently repressing feeling guilty about what that means for another family.
My wife comes from a military family in Tennessee. Her father won the Distinguished Flying Cross over Italy. Her greatest treat as a kid was to sit on his lap and play with the shrapnel still in his arm. He was a moral man. A rock ribbed Republican.
Her first husband was an Army Ranger in Vietnam. This week we watched her oldest son on a zoom conference line at a transfer of command ceremony for the unit he commanded for the last two years.
The American military is not perfect. That’s clear to anyone who has served or has read Catch-22. But there is a rock solid mutual-aid commitment among soldiers for support and gallantry to leave no soldier behind or exposed to the enemy.
My friend, the late Dwight Graves, a Vietnam Green Beret and a member of Vets for Peace made that clear to me. On the day the Shuttle Challenger exploded, we had scheduled a demonstration in Concord, NH against the licensing of the Seabrook nuclear plant. We had planned to meet in front of the war memorial on Main St. outside the State capital.
On hearing the news, we all rushed into the State House to watch television reports. Dwight arrived and found no one was there. A few hours later I saw Dwight who was furious at me. He said, in my world if you do not make a planned rendezvous you are either dead or under fire. What you say and what you do is a matter of life and death in the military.
Donald Trump, either through callous indifference, or subservience to Putin sat on his fat ass and allowed American soldiers to be killed without a peep of complaint or any strong action.
Donald Trump seems untroubled by the 125,000 Americans dead from Covid-19 on his watch. The blood of dozens of American soldiers on his hands is now just another political problem to be spun.
Donald Trump is a traitor giving aid and comfort to the enemy.
Roy Morrison Builds Solar Farms www.RenewableSunPartners
Fact Check:
Casualites
Trump denies being Briefed
https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/28/politics/russia-us-troops-afghanistan-trump/index.html
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