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A Veteran on Memorial Day: Trump Is a Coward. Hegseth Is Erasing the Military I Served In.
Description
An Iraq War veteran’s Memorial Day message.
Memorial Day was established in 1868 by veterans who walked into Civil War cemeteries and laid flowers on the graves of the men they served beside. They called it Decoration Day. It was, and is, for the dead.
This Memorial Day, the Commander in Chief of the United States military is Donald Trump, a man who received five deferments to dodge the Vietnam War, who once said avoiding sexually transmitted infections was his version of combat, who called the American war dead in France “suckers” and “losers,” who attacked a Gold Star family on national television, who told a military widow her dead husband “knew what he signed up for,” who called John McCain a “loser” for being captured, who stood inside Arlington National Cemetery and asked General John Kelly, a four-star Marine whose son was killed in Afghanistan, “what was in it for them?”, who called for the execution of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who said he didn’t want to be seen with wounded amputees, who skipped the dignified transfer of four soldiers killed in Lithuania to host a gala at his golf club, and who said this month that he gets “a kick” out of people bringing up the 13 American service members who died in his Iran war. “Only thirteen,” he said.
His Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, has spent the last year remaking the U.S. military in his own image. He fired Adm. Lisa Franchetti, the first female Chief of Naval Operations. He fired Gen. CQ Brown, the first Black Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He banned transgender service members. He gutted diversity training. He stripped ships of the names of civil rights heroes. He hired his own pastor, a public opponent of women’s suffrage, to advise Pentagon policy. He shared classified war plans on Signal. He renamed the Department of Defense the “Department of War” without congressional approval. He told the graduating class at West Point last week to follow the advice of a racist Christian nationalist.
The U.S. military is constitutionally required to be non-religious and non-partisan. Pete Hegseth is openly violating both.
Today is Memorial Day. It belongs to the fallen. Honor them by remembering. Honor them by voting. Honor them by refusing to let men who never served decide what their sacrifice meant.
Sources:
https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/22/politics/john-kelly-donald-trump-fitness-character
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/02/21/hegseth-firings-cq-brown-joint-chiefs/
https://abcnews.com/US/army-cuts-dozens-medical-training-courses-amid-funding/story?id=133192487
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