They will post a flag today. The men who voted for the appropriations, the ones who sat on the committees, the contractors who cleared a record quarter.
They will post a folded flag and the word sacrifice and they will mean none of it, because sacrifice is the word you use when you do not want to say sent.
A decision was made by people who would never make the drive to Dover. The bill came due somewhere else, to someone else, to a kid who believed the recruiter and a family that believed the kid was protected by men who were serious.
The men were not serious. They were positioning. The deployment was a line item and the funeral was a press opportunity and the gap between those two facts is where the dead actually live.
Grieve them with the specificity they were denied, the names instead of the number, the reason they were nineteen and overseas instead of the abstraction that says they answered a call. There was no call. There was a vote, and a budget, and a man in a good suit who has never once been afraid.
Honor those who have fallen by naming the hand that signed, and then by refusing to hand that pen to anyone who wants it.
There is one party that has never asked for the pen. The Libertarian Party does not want the war it would have to sell you on Memorial Day. That is the whole offer. No new flags to fold.
My submission to the X articles completion is my book, Not Some Random Clown, which chronicles my rise to becoming a youth football coaching legend
If this wins the X competition, ALL $1 million will go to St Jude and the American Cancer Society. I’ll keep nothing
Due to character limits, this book is told in 3 articles. Here’s Part I of III
Respectfully, the difference between these two WaPo articles is the difference between a veteran turned reporter @AlexHortonTX and a reporter without an intimate knowledge of the military awards system. (Separate from Hegseth) there’s a lot of nuance between medals and it’s not just the Bronze Star. It’s true of lower ranked medals that can also be given for combat valor or a significant career achievement. It also extends to combat badges and the combat action ribbon (CAR)—for example: a person can receive a CAR from bullets coming within inches of their head. Another person, say on a surface ship, can receive the same ribbon for incoming rockets shot inside of 5 miles of the ship (USS Carney in Red Sea). Not to say both examples don’t merit the award but there’s a difference. Ultimately, the awarding of medals is definitely not an exact science. For example: the differences between Hegseth’s Bronze Star and Rep. Nehls Bronze Star. Hope this provides some insight, not meant to be a commentary on Hegseth’s medals.
U.S. Army Reserve officer of a 4yr-old here, with multiple military tours and 21 years of service going strong. I’d like to make a point about MSG Walz (Retired) I feel everyone is overlooking…
He mobilized to Italy in support of OEF from Aug 2003- to Apr 2004. That would be when his long awaited IVF baby, Hope, was 2 and 3-yrs-old.
Walz came home with over 23 years of service, and relatively soon after he dropped his well-earned retirement paperwork. He did not miss Hope’s 5th.
My husband just retired from the Guard with 23 years of service—we are both at those years in our life, but also older with young children, including our own 4-year-old. We’re also in a transition of trying to make service beyond uniform our future (yeah, I’m also running for office).
It’s up to all citizen-Soldiers to make the best decisions for their family. Sometimes those are decisions where public service leaves the uniform and family is a priority. We may even retire at the lesser rank (MSG versus SGM) because it’s THAT important.
My two cents: unless you’ve been in this position, it’s truly not yours to judge.
WATCH: @ParisHilton opening statement on Child Welfare Programs: "I am here to be the voice for the children whose voices can't be heard...The treatment these kids have had to endure is criminal...I will not stop until America's youth is safe."
Agreed @chiproytx. But we also said we’d help Ukraine defend themselves. And we’re a good enough & great enough country to do both. And you KNOW we have the resources to do both. Come on man, let’s do what we said we’d do. Let’s do both.