This combination of photos taken at campaign rallies in Atlanta shows Vice President Kamala Harris on July 30 and Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump on Aug. 3.The Associated Press
She says he used dead American soldiers for political purposes. He says she is doing the same, only worse.
In the fourth consecutive election in which neither major-party presidential candidate served in the military – and the first campaign in a third of a century in which the narrow question of respect for the military has emerged as a major issue – the latest area of contention is who is more guilty of using America’s military dead as props.
In a way, for a country in which 12 generals, from George Washington to Dwight Eisenhower, have served as president, the contretemps over Donald Trump’s visit to Arlington National Cemetery is not an unusual campaign controversy.
The difference is that this one is centred on hushed, hallowed ground that is the site of about 27 military burials each workday and about four million tourist visits a year – a hillside that is the final resting place of about 400,000 people. The cenotaph on Chaplains Hill is inscribed with quotations from the Bible (“Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends”) and the Canadian military medical officer and author of In Flanders Fields, John McCrae (“To you from failing hands we throw the torch – be yours to hold it high”).
“Arlington National Cemetery is a place that honours country, service, patriotism and sacrifice,” John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee, said in an interview. “It is in the shadow of the great monuments of our capital and has a weight of history that other places in America cannot match.”
During his campaign, Mr. Kerry faced an effort to challenge his status as a Vietnam War hero. That push was engineered by Christopher LaCivita, currently a senior adviser to Mr. Trump.
The recent controversy began when Mr. Trump and his staff ignored cemetery officials’ pleas that no pictures or videos be taken among the gravestones at Section 60, the site of recently killed American military personnel. U.S. law forbids campaign activities in the cemetery.
The episode spawned a multidimensional dispute.
Mr. Trump’s team denied it had done anything wrong, contradicted cemetery officials’ reports about a shoving incident and argued there was “no conflict” or “fighting” at the site. Mr. Trump, who has reportedly called war victims “losers” and “suckers,” said the accusations were “made up” by Kamala Harris.
The Vice-President responded by calling Arlington National Cemetery “a solemn place; a place where we come together to honour American heroes who have made the ultimate sacrifice in service of this nation.” She added, ”It is not a place for politics” and charged that the former president had “disrespected sacred ground, all for the sake of a political stunt.”
But the dispute between the two camps also was a proxy war, part of broader contention over the hasty 2021 American withdrawal from Afghanistan conducted by President Joe Biden’s administration. The withdrawal has been a focus of criticism from Mr. Trump, even though he began the reduction of forces from the area during his time in the White House.
It was at the cemetery with Mr. Trump that family members of some of the 13 U.S. troops killed in a suicide bombing during the evacuation of Afghanistan accused Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris of being responsible for the deaths of their relatives. Earlier this week, they released a statement through the Trump campaign saying, “We, the families of the brave service members who were tragically killed in the Abbey Gate bombing, are appalled by Vice-President Kamala Harris’s recent attempts to politicize President Trump’s visit to Arlington National Cemetery.”
This is the latest in a Trump campaign effort to tie Ms. Harris to unpopular elements of the Biden administration, a strategy enabled in large measure by Ms. Harris’s efforts to campaign on the administration’s record and to claim her importance, and effectiveness, during her time as vice-president.
Even as Mr. Trump has lamented the loss of American life in Afghanistan, his campaign has repeatedly questioned the military credentials of Tim Walz, Ms. Harris’s running mate, who served for more than two decades in the National Guard. (Mr. Trump’s running mate, J.D. Vance, served in the U.S. Marine Corps.)
Mr. Trump has also criticized Ms. Harris for high inflation and, considering her responsibilities in addressing the migrant crisis, for failing to stanch the chaos at the southern border. But the withdrawal from Afghanistan has been one of his principal criticisms, and prominent Republican political figures have joined in the attacks.
This dispute is part of the two campaigns’ sparring over which of the candidates would provide the steadier hand in foreign policy. It is a political impulse that is relatively recent and that has no analogue in Canada, where none of the past eight prime ministers have had military service.
“Both sides are trying to wrap themselves in the flag,” said Andrew Bacevich, an emeritus Boston University professor of American diplomatic and military history. “The notion that there’s something unseemly or suspicious about military service was the case in the 1970s. That has completely gone away.”