Big Red Car here. Sunup not quite here but it will be shortly and it will be bringing the warmth of a Texas winter.
So, Donald Trump skips the Republican debate in Iowa and instead stages a veterans event raising $6,000,000 for veterans?
You OK with that?
Let me be a bit as crass as Trump — I am perfectly fine with rich people giving money to veterans but I am more than a little pissed off with the way Donald Trump used veterans as a personal imprimatur.
Let me tell you about that.
What is a veteran, Big Red Car?
Veterans are the guys described by George Orwell thusly:
“People sleep peacefully in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.”
We are a free nation only because our Continental Army and state militias, under the command of General George Washington, wetted their bayonets with British and their mercenaries’ blood. Our country was literally created by fighting men. The Nazis and the Japs were defeated by Americans who took the fight to those bastards and kicked their asses.
The Boss’s father was one of them and The Boss is a veteran of the combat engineers.
We owe the existence of our nation to the sacrifices of veterans.
All vets are not created equal
All veterans are not the same. Some men and women served in combat arms units, combat support units, combat service support units. Not everyone was in the infantry, the combat engineers, armor or artillery.
Some were in the finance corps or the adjutant general corps — the folks who pay the army and the folks who administer the paperwork.
The Big Red Car doesn’t get why someone would go to a place like VMI or West Point to serve with a typewriter. [Big Red Car doesn’t like Military Police either but that’s a story for another day.]
Donald Trump
It is particularly offensive to the Big Red Car to see someone like Donald Trump, a Viet Nam Era draft dodger whose protestations of “bone spurs” kept him from serving, pimping veterans and using them for shallow political purposes.
Make no mistake, this is not a diagnosis made by an Army doctor at a pre-induction physical; this is a diagnosis made by a civilian doctor to keep Donald Trump from being drafted and then subjected to a pre-induction physical.
There are a myriad of jobs which could be undertaken by a soldier which do not entail marching and thus even a person afflicted with bone spurs could serve. If they wanted to.
Donald Trump was not prevented from serving. He sought not to serve.
Faux warriors
The Big Red Car is tired and exhausted by men whose personal narrative does not match their bellicosity.
Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, Dick Cheney, Phil Gramm — all guys who avoided the draft at great effort and who subsequently were willing to employ the military to undertake actions they personally found to be odious.
The Big Red Car calls them “chicken hawks” — too chicken to serve but once in office they exhibit hawkish tendencies when it comes to the blood of someone else’s son.
Bottom line it, Big Red Car
These type of men want to be associated with the manliness and honor and nobility of veterans and by that association reflect a bit of that same honor upon themselves.
It is called “stolen valor.”
They are cowards and they want to appear not so cowardly by pimping veterans.
There it is. Skin it back and let it stink.
They are pussies who want to associate with better men and thereby camouflage their cowardly behavior.
What can be done, Big Red Car?
If you really want to return the service of veterans, then make the fucking Veterans Administration system work. It is a shit hole of corruption.
Make the VA work for veterans rather than against veterans.
Spare me any more chicken hawks, please.
But, hey, what the Hell do I really know anyway? I’m just a Big Red Car. And my Boss is a freakin’ veteran.
Solid points.
“stolen valor.” — really big, sick-o bummer.
Cheney? For his “no doubt” claim, maybe he was supporting this from some chemical weapons the US shipped Saddam to use in his war with Iran? Whatever, that was a sick-o claim that was a biggie in the dumb-dumb Gulf War II effort that cost the US precious blood and treasure. And he is still writing books basically urging the US to throw more precious blood and treasure at absurd foreign adventures. He is unbounded in his eagerness and willingness to throw precious US blood and treasure at whatever foolish nonsense he comes up with sitting on the pot. Sick-o.
Viet Nam was another total sick-o situation: Our main problem with ex-Paris dishwasher Ho was that he got some free dinners in Moscow and Peking. So, we picked total losers in Saigon, people who could not stand even against the people of South Viet Nam. We lost, were run out of Saigon with people hanging off the skids of the helicopters.
And what has happened? Nothing the US need worry about. Why? JFK, LBJ, and Nixon were arrogant, plenty eager to throw precious US blood and treasure at that nonsense foreign adventure, totally against all evidence and common sense, just so that they would not be accused of “losing” to the world-wide Communist movement to have dominoes fall from SE Asia through the Philippines, Australia, Hawaii, and land on the beaches of San Diego — Dean Rusk. Absurd. Wacko. Delusional. Demented. Destructive.
For Viet Nam, for the US soldiers who served, the US called and they went, and they deserve our full gratitude and support.
But as a voting US citizen, it was my responsibility to ask if we should be there at all. For this I read stacks of books, once at a speech asked a question of General Maxwell Taylor: “Sir, you explained that the soldiers in Viet Nam don’t fight very well. But from more you said, it appears that some soldiers in Viet Nam fight very well but just are not fighting on our side.” He didn’t really answer the question. Sure, General Taylor had one heck of a good military record, but in this case he was trying to have the US throw more precious blood and treasure at that bloody mud hole in Viet Nam — bummer.
And it was worse: We destabilized Cambodia and, thus, enabled Pol Pot, and it was North Viet Nam that went in, cleaned up the mess, and put Sihanouk back in power.
I concluded that we should just come home. Just leave.
I can’t blame any US citizen who found a legal way to stay out of Viet Nam.
I can think of some people who should have gone to Viet Nam, with an M1 rifle, on the ground — JFK, LBJ, Robert McNamera, Dean Rusk, the other wise men, etc.
Gee, from the YouTube videos I’ve seen, it appears that this plan is what Trump is calling for, very strongly.
Here, maybe Trump is not as good as, say, Rep. Colonel Dr. Chris Gibson or any of thousands of other veterans, but on this issue, of the people running for POTUS, Trump seems to be by a wide margin the least bad which, then, is essentially the same as the best.
And the $6 million Trump raised and passed out to 22 or so good sounding veterans organizations is at least a nice $6 million better for the veterans than the day before. Some suffering veteran who can get more TLC from that $6 million will turn it down because Trump didn’t go to Viet Nam?
Rubio, Cruz, are they better for the US veterans? Until 15 months ago, Cruz was a citizen of Canada?
Hillary? Did Hillary serve? How did Hillary do for us in Libya, Benghazi, Gulf War II?
During Viet Nam there was also the statement of the famous head of the US Selective Service system, General Louis Hershey, IIRC: “The US Selective Service System has national manpower management responsibilities far beyond merely staffing the armed forces.” That is, e.g., he wanted good STEM field students to stay in school or in jobs for US national security. Maybe, really, Hershey didn’t want someone like Trump to get an M1 or M16 or whatever and crawl through mud in Viet Nam.
Really, the decision on Trump would have been made by his local draft board, and maybe they just didn’t want Trump to go. Uh, in simple terms, that’s much of why the draft boards were local, that is, putting this bluntly, so that the local favorite sons wouldn’t have to go.
My father tried to enlist but was turned down because of the job he already had with the US Navy. So, to help, he took a second job related to US national security.
Like a lot of things in life, not everything about the situation is as desirable as we could wish. Or, there’s what we’ve got, what we really want, and what we can get that maybe is less than we really want but, still, a lot better than what we’ve got. In such things in politics, a smart approach is to try to get along with everyone and accept all the help can get.
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The Big Red Car unleashes a bit of invective toward politicians who would use veterans as political props.
https://themusingsofthebigredcar.com/stop-pimping-our-veterans/
BRC
https://www.themusingsofthebigredcar.com