As soon as I heard Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance vilify the military service of his opponent, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, all I could think was: Seriously? Are we really doing this again?
Are we really going to let Republicans — who are freaking out now that their supposed path back to the White House has turned into a bumpy ride — smear Walz the way they smeared Vietnam veteran John Kerry 20 years ago?
“When Tim Walz was asked by his country to go to Iraq, do you know what he did?” Vance said last week in Michigan. “He left the military and allowed his unit to go without him, a fact for which he has been aggressively criticized by many of the people he served with.”
Numerous journalists have denounced this lie. They have also reported that the “people he worked with” are Republicans who support former President Trump.
Walz served for 24 years in the Army National Guard before being honorably discharged. During the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, he was stationed in Italy, supporting American combat troops. In early 2005, months before his unit was ordered to Iraq, he decided to retire from the Guard to run for Congress. He became only the second Democrat in more than a century to win a traditionally Republican seat and continued to support the military as a member of the House Armed Services and Veterans Affairs committees.
In 2018, when running for governor, Walz wrongly claimed he carried guns “in war” by arguing that civilians were not allowed to own assault weapons. Vance hypocritically accused Walz of “stolen valor,” a phrase typically used to describe lies about military service or honors.
Trump's running mate should be ashamed of himself for attacking a fellow veteran.
Like Walz, Vance enlisted right out of high school. He served four years in the Marine Corps and was deployed to Iraq for about six months in 2005 and 2006. He worked in public affairs and never saw combat, though that doesn’t mean he was never in danger. No American in Iraq at that time, military or civilian, was entirely safe.
For many Americans, the attempt to smear Walz has a familiar ring.
“Republicans,” Hillary Clinton wrote on social media last week, “are repeating an old tactic and trying to smear a veteran Democrat.”
The “quick navigation” method worked once. Why not try it again?
In 2004, then-Senator Kerry, a bona fide war hero, ran against President George W. Bush. Like many privileged young men who wanted to avoid combat in Vietnam, Bush had served in the Texas Air National Guard.
Kerry had been a lieutenant in the Navy. In 1969, he commanded a Swift boat in the Mekong Delta for four months and was awarded a Silver Star, a Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts. Devastated by what he had witnessed, Kerry became a leader of Vietnam Veterans Against the War shortly after returning home.
“How do you ask a man to be the last to die for a mistake?” he famously asked the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in April 1971, nearly two years before the United States withdrew from Vietnam.
His activism earned him the lasting enmity of those who supported the insane war, and he was accused of endangering soldiers still fighting.
Years later, when Kerry accepted his party’s nomination at the Democratic convention in Boston, he saluted firmly and said, “I am John Kerry, and I am here to do my duty.” This was a threat to Republicans, who adopted a then-novel strategy: turning Kerry’s greatest strength into his greatest weakness.
Hence the group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and, ultimately, the term “swiftboating.”
The “truth” they promulgated was that Kerry was an impostor who lied about his service. It was an accusation so outlandish and false that Kerry tried to ignore it. By the time his campaign realized it was harming him, the lie had already taken hold in the public imagination.
It should surprise no one that Republican political operative Chris LaCivita, one of the architects of the deceitful campaign against Kerry, is now one of two co-chairs of the Trump campaign. His fingerprints are all over Vance’s outlandish claims about Walz.
The great irony is that Trump avoided service in Vietnam in part by claiming he had bone spurs in his heels.
That didn't stop Trump from fiercely attacking Republican Sen. John McCain, a Navy pilot who spent nearly six years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam and carried the scars of his torture there throughout his life.
“I like people who didn't get captured,” Trump said during his first presidential campaign.
As president, The Atlantic reported, he repeatedly disparaged service members who died in war, calling them “losers” and “suckers,” and requested that wounded veterans, especially amputees, not be allowed to participate in military parades.
“Nobody wants to see that,” he told staff during a planning meeting in 2018.
Every time Vance attacks Walz's military service, Democrats should remind voters that it is shameless service to a man who utterly disregards the Americans who risk their lives to serve their country.
