Tim Walz Stole Your Mom's Valor, LAST NIGHT
Tim Walz Stole Your Mom's Valor, LAST NIGHT
Oh man, they got *nothing*.
Oh golly, the Rightwing Outrage Machine finally found an angle to attack Tim Walz, who has been entirely too awesome and cuddly in the first 24 hours since leftwing satanic so-and-so Kamala Harris (a socialist monster, who laughs) chose him to be her running mate Tuesday. Did you know that Tim Walz, who served in the Army National Guard for 24 years, is actually a low-down dirty VALOR THIEF who stole all the valor and also chickened out / retired from the National Guard in 2005 just for the trivial excuse that he was running for Congress, when he was morally obligated to stay in the Guard forever, or at least long enough for his unit to be ordered to Iraq several months after he resigned?
Hey, it’s what the supporters of Cadet Bone Spurs have, and they are going to milk it for all they’re worth, because unlike Donald Trump, Walz never pretended that being sent to military school made him a veteran, and never had a personal Vietnam that consisted of worrying about getting herpes from sleeping with women he’d picked up at discos. Heck, Tim Walz has never even proudly shown everyone a Purple Heart medal that somebody gave him so he could claim he had a Purple Heart medal.
Now, here’s the background you need: Tim Walz served in the Army National Guard starting the day after he turned 17, until 2005 when he decided to resign and go into politics, a move he had been considering for quite a while and discussed with other Guard members. Walz eventually reached the rank of commander sergeant major, but retired at the lower grade of master sergeant because he hadn’t served in the higher rank long enough because he didn’t complete required coursework at the U.S. Army Sergeants Major Academy (of course there’s such a thing!) completed the to qualify for its retirement benefits. (We initially got the reason wrong; Wonkette regrets the error)
When Walz ran for reelection as governor in 2022, his Republican opponent, former state Sen. Scott Jensen, accused Walz of leaving the National Guard to avoid his unit’s being deployed to Iraq in George Bush’s Great Democratizing the Middle East initiative. Predictably, Jensen never served in any branch of the military, which means he’s best-qualified to accuse Walz of shirking his duty after 24 years of service.
The Minneapolis Star-Tribune reported at the time that others who served with Walz spoke highly of him and said that he’d more than put in his time by the time he left the Guard for politics.
Joseph Eustice, a 32-year veteran of the guard who led the same battalion as Walz, said the governor fulfilled his duty.
"He was a great soldier," Eustice said. "When he chose to leave, he had every right to leave."
Eustice said claims to the contrary are ill-informed and possibly sour grapes by a soldier who was passed over for the promotion to command sergeant major that went to Walz.
That alleged sour graper, Thomas Behrends, is back in the news this week insisting to anyone who’ll listen that Walz is a great big chicken, a traitor, and worst of all, a Democrat.
After Behrends and Walz’s opponent Jensen accused Walz of betraying his unit, Walz said, at a state Capitol dedication ceremony for Medal of Honor recipients from Minnesota, that it was really too bad that Behrends felt that way.
"I don't know if Tom just disagrees with my politics or whatever, but my record speaks for itself and my accomplishments in uniform speak for itself, and there's many people in this crowd, too, that I served with," Walz said. "It's just unfortunate."
Eustice, also a teacher, told the Star-Tribune, “I love [Walz] as a soldier; I don't care much for him as a politician,” and that he simply wanted to make clear he agrees with Walz’s version of events.
Finally, the notion that Walz bailed to avoid deployment simply doesn’t fit with reality, as CNN points out:
Walz retired from the Army National Guard in May 2005, according to the Minnesota National Guard. Typically, service members need to submit papers several months before they can retire.
A National Guard article on his unit’s deployment states that it received alert orders to deploy to Iraq in July 2005, two months after Walz retired.
What’s more, CNN notes that Walz filed his paperwork to run for Congress on February 10, 2005; presumably, he submitted his retirement paperwork around the same time (or even earlier) in order to retire by May.
Clearly, Walz is psychic and saw that his unit would be deployed (at a minimum) five months later, so he chickened out and ran. It only stands to reason that Republicans would fear an opponent who can see the future.
OK but what’s all this “stolen valor” nonsense, then? Well that one is a little bit more on Walz, because he said something that is genuinely not true in unscripted remarks about gun control. In an undated video from the Harris campaign, Walz said that he’d sent campaign contributions from the NRA back to them, citing his own gun bona fides as he did so:
I spent 25 years in the Army and I hunt … I’ve been voting for common sense legislation that protects the Second Amendment, but we can do background checks. We can research the impacts of gun violence. […] We can make sure those weapons of war, that I carried in war, are only carried in war.
Thing is, while he was in the Guard all those years, he never saw combat, so he did not in fact carry weapons “in war.” But he carried them during war. Meh, whatever.
Yes, that’s his stolen valor, as far as anyone can tell. He should have said “those weapons of war that I carried in the Army,” but he said “in war,” which is exactly the same as falsely claiming to have stormed an enemy position at Tarawa (he’d be a little young for that). Is it disqualifying? It has to be, for supporters of the guy who said American soldiers who died in battle were “losers” and “suckers.”
Here’s JD Vance calling Walz a fakey fake valor stealer and coward at a rally in Michigan Tuesday:
“Well, I wonder, Tim Walz, when were you ever in war? When was this? What was this weapon that you carried into war, given that you abandoned your unit right before they went to Iraq, and he has not spent a day in a combat zone? What bothers me about Tim Walz is the stolen valor garbage. Do not pretend to be something that you’re not. […] I’d be ashamed if I was him. And I lied about my military service like he did.”
You do have to at least acknowledge the chutzpah of a tech investor backed by a billionaire, who markets himself as just a good ol’ boy from simple folk, telling Tim Walz not to pretend to be something he isn’t.
Not everyone is buying the bullshit. Here’s Never-Trumper A.J. Delgado saying that damn right, Walz served his time before entering politics:
Also, as the New Republic and many others have pointed out, Vance himself wrote in his memoir Hillbilly Elegy that he was “lucky to escape any real fighting.”
But that’s OK, because if you’re a Republican, you can get away with it, the end.
[Mediaite (via Joe.My.God) / Military.com / MPR / Star-Tribune]
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JD Bowman/Hamel/Vance is saw as much combat as a marine as he grew up in Appalachia. Which is to say, not at all. He was raised in the safety of an Ohio suburb. I actually grew up in Appalachia--SW PA--although not a hillbilly, a secure middle class existence.
As an old, my DH received a number in the draft lottery of 19. Somehow, he managed to get himself into a NY National Guard unit on Long Island. He was sent to Georgia for basic training and South Carolina for ACS to learn how to be a signalman. Then it was 6 years of monthly meetings and 2-week sessions in Watertown, NY. He left as an E-5.
According to the DOD, he's a veteran. If you served, you served. To hell with these people.
Ta, Dok. Jadey Dunce is welcome to go fuck himself, or his couch, or his beard.