By George S. Roof
I and most of the veterans I know take strong exception to people like Bill Clements trying to bring his vitriol and hatred for President Trump to the military of this country.
In his usual diatribe he extols his fantasies about the current president without having the slightest clue as to what those who served feel and know.
First of all, his genuflecting to John McCain is sickening to most of us who served during that era. John McCain lived long enough to rewrite his history and appeal to the socialist democrats by capitulating to the far left in his vote against repealing Obamacare. Mr. Clements conveniently forgets it was John McCain who, after his election to Congress, got appointed to the Armed Services committee and sealed POW records. He then cut off funding for finding and repatriating Vietnam POWs who were listed as missing in action. It was John McCain who initiated a complete rewrite of the Military Code of Conduct dealing with capture. It was John McCain who brought the infamous Steele Dossier to the FBI, knowing full well that it was a fake that had been paid for by Hillary Clinton. He will never be any hero to many of us.
Since he’s numbered his talking points that include dismissing James Mattis from his cabinet, I have a few questions to his pandering to military people. Did Mr. Clements ever raise such objections during the Obama administration when top level officer were “fired”? Has he forgotten about Generals McKiernan, McChrystal, Petraeus, Allen, Dunford, Campbell, and Nicholson? Many good military people fail to excel in venues outside the military.
His third point is most interesting to any military person as to his trust in the generals. Career military people who are outside the chain of immediate command all feel a distrust at the top levels. Most of us see the general officers hobnobbing with corporate CEO’s looking for a future position where they can continue to enjoy the treatments they will leave after retiring. As for the president’s trust, he found that Mattis was wanting to push his own agenda rather than that of his employer. After the shenanigans of guys like James Clapper (a retired 3-star general) who was supposed to be the person ensuring the president had every scrap of classified information, why would he or anyone else have blind faith in retired generals?
Now let me address the common thread that TDS sufferers like Mr. Clemens: Donald Trump was lawfully deferred from service in Vietnam. If you weren’t there, don’t invoke that.
So I say to Mr. Clemens and all the others with their blind hatred of President Trump: Stay away from invoking the military into your psychosis. We are not stage props. We finally see a president who untied our hands with the silly Rules of Engagement foisted on us by President Obama. We see the quality of our lives has only changed for the better during this administration. You need to find some other talking point in trying to spread your hate.
George S. Roof is a resident of Magnolia.