What Trump Doesn’t Understand About the Military
By SUE FULTON SEPT. 9, 2016
I doubt that many of us veterans had high expectations for the candidates’ forum on national security on Wednesday. Our country has essentially been at war now for 15 years, yet fewer of our would-be leaders have real ties to the military. But, in the crowd of veterans at the forum, I, and those around me, were startled more than once by Donald J. Trump’s lack of understanding of how his comments would be heard by us. In his allotted 30 minutes, he made several statements that reflected a lack of knowledge of how the military works, or appeared to argue for action that would be a violation of the armed services’ values.
I was a member of the class of 1980 at West Point — the first class that admitted women — and I served in the Army for five years. Since then, my work and life have been connected to the military. In the 1990s I worked on the failed campaign to end the ban on service by gay Americans, and a decade later I worked to get the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy repealed. I have stayed close to West Point and mentored cadets and staff. Now, I am seeking local office as a Democrat in New Jersey. I am not among the 55 percent of current or former members of the military who support Mr. Trump’s candidacy. But I went to the forum with an open mind, interested to hear how Mr. Trump would speak directly to his military supporters, and to see his grasp of the issues that affect us all.
I was able to ask him a question. Because he has been so outspoken about immigrants, saying that people who have entered the country illegally would not be allowed to stay, I wanted to know whether he believed an undocumented immigrant who wanted to serve in the military should be allowed to do so. He said they could stay in that circumstance. I agree with him there, but I don’t understand how that fits with his previous statements. Which is true? When a Marine veteran, Rachel Fredericks, asked him about suicide statistics among veterans, he corrected her numbers — but she was right and he was wrong. Regarding sexual assault, he commented that a military court system to handle such cases “practically doesn’t exist,” which is baffling. The Judge Advocate General’s Corps in the Army alone constitutes one of the world’s largest law firms.
But worse were those comments that fly in the face of our core values. You cannot underestimate the importance of honor, of virtuous conduct, among military people. Mr. Trump said that the United States should “take the oil” from Iraq, citing the adage that to the victor go the spoils. When he said this, there was a muffled gasp in the room. This is called plunder. Stealing the national resources of another sovereign country is effectively a war crime. Given an opportunity to explain a 2013 tweet — “26,000 unreported sexual assaults in the military — only 238 convictions. What did these geniuses expect when they put men and women together?” — he doubled down. “It is a correct tweet,” he said. “There are many people that think that’s absolutely correct.”
Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/09/opinion/what-trump-doesnt-understand-about-the-military.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-left-region
= new reply since forum marked as read
