This article is deeply disturbing. Go ahead and click the link. I’ll have a cup of coffee and meet you back here.
OUR LEADERS
I’ve never read a story like that. I never dreamt I would.
I served under CICs Reagan, Bush and Clinton. I’d have gone anywhere they told me to.
We loved our Commander(s)-in-Chief. We volunteered for different reasons, some to learn a new skill for a better job when we were discharged, some because we just wanted to serve, some because we were gung-ho and went Eleven Bravo and on to Ranger school and Special Forces. Some enlisted didn’t finish basic training and wore sergeant’s chevrons and wound up at West Point. Not a single man or woman recruit I ever met was serving because they were suckers, losers or morons. Not one. All were patriots, ready to salute the Colors and learn everything they could learn to properly serve our country.
HISPANIC RECRUITS, NOT “AMERICAN” RECRUITS?
But it was not Hispanic recruits who spoke no or little English who were treated like patriotic volunteers. They were kept somewhat aside, mostly ignored by sergeants at the Reception unit. Even Hispanic sergeants treated them like cattle. I never forgot that. I wonder how many of them went career, then wound up deported by the Trump administration. How many veterans did that really happen to?
That still bothers me. At reception there was such a group, and they liked me. With crude high school Spanish, I at least tried to make friends with them. Great guys, every one of them. They would greet me with, “Hey, Spanish!” and smile. I silently felt very bad for them. One time a sergeant yelled at them to keep their place and the pain was clear in each man’s eyes. I couldn’t tell them how I felt. I just put my hand over my heart and said “Mis amigos” and they knew what I meant. I guess the pain showed in my eyes, too.
They were willing, they were eager to prove their loyalty to their country. It was shameful how they were treated. Even back then, or especially so, because we were supposed to be better than that.
But we weren’t better than that and now, all past commanders in chief look like gods next to The Donald.
HONORABLE
I met some recruits who couldn’t hack it and were discharged. But at least they tried. That’s more than Donald Trump ever did.
Chain of command is an integral part of our military. On the wall of any training CQ there was always a group of photographic portraiture with officers, lowest rank at the bottom, and the president at the top. We were required to memorize those names and faces.
In training, especially basic, you’re not getting around much. All of your treks are hikes or company runs to lonely roads and back. One day I saw a General, saluted and said, Good afternoon, sir!” And it was cool! With my background, I never thought I would get to do that.
UNIMAGINABLE
I could never have pictured a president denigrating us. All of us. Nobody could, not us and no one in our chain of command. Donald Trump has done that since he was sworn in. What president ever called their entire military command “dopes” fighting in a loser’s war, and where the hell did he get off, saying “I wouldn’t go to war with you.”?
Well, I know the answer to that. So do you. Who pulls his strings? The people he praises instead of our Americans. The ones every responsible news agency has already reported as interfering in the current (and 2016) election.
This is not unfounded, unverified or fake news. And aside from the above-linked article, the insults that recently came to light have also been verified. He called an all volunteer service a bunch of suckers and those killed in action “losers”. He once told a woman that her dead soldier “knew what he was getting into” and never bothered to thank her for his service or to offer his condolences. He was mean and impossibly cold.
SENATOR JOHN MCCAIN’S MOST DISTINGUISHED SERVICE
While campaigning, Trump said McCain was no hero because he was captured. Sadly, this is still showing up in places on the internet, especially social media, and it’s disgusting. It isn’t pertinent to the election except for Trumpsters who back up every single thing Trump’s ever said or tweeted, which includes some 20,000 lies.
For the record, John McCain was already acquainted with danger. When he served as a pilot on USS Forrestal, the Douglas Skyhawk he was in was hit, or the one next to him was hit, by a rocket accidentally fired from another jet.
McCain was surrounded by the first flames to rise up and was trapped in his cockpit. He tried to help another pilot when a bomb on the underside of another aircraft cooked off, detonating and nearly killing him. Wounded by shrapnel, he was damn lucky he wasn’t instantly killed.
He only escaped climbing along the nose and projecting refueling probe which extended beyond the danger.
McCain survived that disastrous fire. He could have remained aboard while the wounded ship put in for repairs, but he asked for another ship, and was transferred, to USS Oriskany. That was a noteworthy vessel in her own right; the last Essex- (Ticonderoga) class carrier whose keel was laid down in World War Two, but her construction ceased in 1946, then resumed. She underwent a long series of refitting and designation changes and served in combat operations in Korea and again in Vietnam. Ironically, she had been through a serious accidental fire of her own just before assisting Forrestal during that vessel’s disastrous fire. It was this ship from which Lt. Commander John McCain sortied in 1967 for a bombing mission over Hanoi. He was shot down and during ejection broke a leg and both arms. His parachute put him in a lake and he nearly drowned.
His capture in the area as civilians dragged him from the water assured the nature of his treatment as a POW. He was not treated medically. From the civilians he incurred additional injuries until a rifle butt and bayonet smashed his shoulder and pierced him. He would be permanently impaired and in pain for the rest of his life.
Under severe torture he finally broke and gave insignificant overall information because there was only so much he knew; of future plans there was nothing he could say. He was however able to give the names of the Green Bay Packers when his tormentors wanted specific names of personnel. He would regret giving any information at all long into the future, and it is this point, some argue, that made him a confessed traitor.
Let’s look at that for a minute. Both arms broken, not set. One leg broken, also not set. No pain medication given. Such minute rations that he rapidly lost a considerable amount of weight. Constantly tortured. Then questioned again and again.
Perhaps those who consider him a traitor dont know what that must feel like, what must go through a battered mind, a traumatized mind constantly being traumatized even more.
Perhaps no one judging him then or now ever had a shattered shoulder or even a separated shoulder, which is so painful that grown men sob from the agony.
And they dont know what it’s like, being mentally played with night and day, which reinforces physical pain and promises much more to come.
This is to say nothing of the fact that McCain knew where he was, and must have been terrified that he would not see home again.
Only when it was learned that their prisoner’s father was an admiral did they begin to treat him, and that isn’t saying much. Mostly they just barely kept him alive, giving him one aspirin for pain and botching a surgery attempt.
While his captors did clean him up and give him a cigarette for an interview by a French reporter, as soon as the interview was over, he was beaten for not thanking his “hosts” for their “humane” treatment of him.
The story of the Hanoi Hilton is well known. It’s also known that he refused an early, out-of-order release because his father was an admiral. John McCain wasn’t going home until everyone else did. That’s a hero.
No matter what you think of the man, the harmless overall nature of information he gave, or his later political career, you cannot call him a traitor. He was faithful through things you and I can’t even imagine, because knowing about something isn’t even close to enduring it. John McCain endured it.
Donald Trump said McCain wasn’t a hero because he was captured, and “I like people who weren’t captured”. But Donald Trump kept out of the draft by getting a medical doctor to write in “bone spurs” under the excuse box. Where I come from, that’s not patriotic and we would have called him a sissy or a pansy. Oddly, some of “us” are now supporting the man, turning from Republican party to the CoT (Cult of Trump) faction.
2020: BACKLASH
Even though the “suckers” and “losers” remarks have only just been made public, military leaders were well aware of them as soon as he said them. Then came the Russian bounty story. By that point every soldier, sailor, airman and marine knew about it. It’s unfortunate that their ears had to hear it or their eyes to see the coverage. I can’t imagine being in uniform and knowing that my Commander-in-Chief tried to deny it by claiming “…it never crossed my desk…”
Because that’s pathetically lame. It’s so bad that it isn’t even a proper denial. It’s just a lie made by a liar who doesn’t care about the truth, treats it with contempt and grinds it beneath his heel.
To any lie he tells and for every truth known by the press, he counters with insane bullshit like Antifa and Deep State conspiracy theories, and he doesn’t care where they come from. If even Laura Ingraham tells him to his face that something he said sounds like a conspiracy theory, you’re really sorry. You really suck at lying.
Joe Biden has the words I needed to hear after the outrage of the breaking news.
I think back on my military experience with the US Army and remember the pride I felt marching in front of civilians to a cadence that went, “Give me a hatchet and I’ll chop my way to Hell…” because we were sharp.
I remember the pushups. The mountain climbers. Command inspection. Ironing T-shirts. Starching collars. Spit shining. How normal it became to sit at a row of toilets without partitions, read your mail and talk shit to your buddies while taking a shit.
Our men and women in uniform are special. Everything about their training breaks down barriers and makes them ready to fight as a unit and not a bunch of individuals. They changed during training, advanced training and their service afterward. I always hate seeing them in harm’s way but I am always grateful for their service.
They are not “suckers”.
Our fallen are not “losers”.
TWO REASONS WHY
There can be only two reasons for what Trump has done to undermine the military, Judicial Branch, postal system, the rule of law and the simple truth.
After all, he’s the one talking about people in the shadows, “people you never heard of” behind Biden’s campaign when there’s no evidence of such people.
The first is, he’s a nut.
He’s the one who said you need a photo ID to buy a box of cereal.
He’s the one who gets nauseous when talking about women and blood, obviously in reference to menstrual periods.
He’s the one who thinks Africa is a country.
He’s the one who complimented a dead man (Frederick Douglass) on doing good work.
He’s the one who called Mexicans “rapists”.
That list goes on and on. 20,000 lies and counting.
The other reason is that Vladimir Putin has put him in place to weaken this country. The once mighty USA cant even trust their mail service, has run out on Allies, leaving some to almost instant death (Kurds) and now is a laughingstock instead of a refuge against oppression and a light to the rest of the world.
Four more years will not matter. He will only need one to finish the job.
Between now and 3 November, nothing he does, including starting a war, would surprise me. If he loses, he’ll fight the decision and embark a scorched earth process.
I’d like to call on you to look back. Not so much at the things we’ve done wrong; we’re still here and still fighting to make things right.
No, I’d like you to think back on our best moments, what we’ve done that set this country apart. We stood up for friends, fought for what was right. We’ve braved the worst that nature could dish out, rebuilt and went onward. We fought a civil war and came away not perfect, but better. We sent men to the Moon and back, sent men and women into space, learned things that made the world more understood than ever, proved that the impossible was possible. We fought overwhelming odds to become a sovereign nation.
If it wasn’t perfect, we have no reason not to keep trying to do better.
We have no excuse not to try to do better.
You think about those things.
And on the third of November, you’ll know what to do.
Memoirs of an American Asshole 