In this June 6, 2019, file photo, President Donald Trump stands with Second World War veterans during a ceremony to mark the 75th anniversary of D-Day at the Normandy American Cemetery, in Colleville-sur-Mer, Normandy, France.The Associated Press
President Donald Trump has a long history of belittling American wars.
In respect to Vietnam, Fox News last week cited him as saying, “It was a stupid war. Anyone who went was a sucker.” He’s called the Iraq war “the worst single mistake ever made in the history of our country.”
According to anonymous sources quoted in The Atlantic magazine, he referred in 2018 to the American war dead at the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery in France as “losers” and “suckers.”
Mr. Trump would be on safer ground if he kept his insults to the country’s political leaders. They’ve been the suckers. They’ve been the losers. They are the ones who brought on the stupid wars.
On Vietnam, so-called brainiacs in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations such as defence secretary Robert McNamara were credulous adherents to the domino theory, among other canards, that overinflated the threat. As for Iraq, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were chomping at the bit to get a war going. The fiasco over non-existent weapons of mass destruction followed.
The young people who fought could hardly be faulted for succumbing to the heaps of hokum. Most were patriots. Those who didn’t go to Vietnam, including Mr. Trump with his feigned bonespurs, and Mr. Bush and Bill Clinton, who also found ways to avoid service, ended up making the right call, as did tens of thousands of draft dodgers who made their way to Canada. For them, no journey at the dawn of life to, citing Hamlet, "the undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveller returns.”
While not taking much heat for his views on Vietnam and Iraq, Mr. Trump’s alleged, disgraceful description of the fallen has sparked a furor that could be of major consequence. Support from the military is critical for him. If he loses it, he can kiss his chances of re-election goodbye.
Military veterans and those in active service comprise a whopping 20 million of the voting population, which is roughly 12 per cent of the electorate. That’s not far short of the number of Hispanics and the number of Black people eligible to vote.
According to exit polls, 61 per cent of those who served in the military voted for Mr. Trump in 2016, as opposed to only 34 per cent for Hillary Clinton. But recent soundings indicate that support has dropped significantly. A Military Times poll taken of active-duty service members found half of respondents (49.9 per cent) had an unfavourable view of the President. That poll was taken before The Atlantic’s charges.
It would be ironic if it’s the military that brings Mr. Trump down. Of the multitude of offences of his presidency, his actions with respect to war and peace hardly rank among the most egregious. He’s moved to stop the endless wars, pulling back from Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and elsewhere. He has no interest in his country as a global enforcer or referee. He’s made the North Atlantic Treaty Organization take a bigger role in financing Western defence.
The late Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, writing in 2016, drew an adroit comparison between his retrenchment philosophy and that of Barack Obama’s. “Mr. Obama ordered retreat because he always felt the U.S. was not good enough for the world, too flawed to have earned the moral right to be the world hegemon,” he said. “Trump would follow suit, disdaining allies and avoiding conflict, because the world is not good enough for us.”
This president’s peacenik proclivities could broaden his appeal to moderates, but there is little indication that is happening.
As for the Pentagon poohbahs, Mr. Trump said this week that they’re displeased “because they want to do nothing but fight wars so that all of those wonderful companies that make the bombs and make the planes and make everything else stay happy.”
This was mindful of president Dwight D. Eisenhower’s departing speech in 1961, in which he warned against a military-industrial complex.
But Mr. Trump is hypocritical in this regard because he’s been feeding the Pentagon beast that he so decries with major defence budget increases since coming to office; this while the country was taking on serious levels of deficit and debt.
He vehemently denies The Atlantic’s accusations, but Americans who have been bombarded with his avalanche of insults know he is perfectly capable of having said such things.
In the past, his guttersnipe ways, his utter lack of dignity, haven’t grievously hurt him. His base seemingly approved of his malignant tongue. This time it may well be different. If so, it will serve him right.
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