A battle so protracted and gruesome that John Wayne and Steve McQueen romanticism doesn’t cut it. At the height of the hell that was generated at that battle theatre, Hitler was said to have disparaged the Wehrmacht commander (Gen. Paulus–who the Fuhrer promoted to Field Marshall so that he would not break tradition and surrender).
The Leader implied that Paulus “couldn’t cut it”
He was wrong. But I can imagine Trump having the same conversation…with one caveat. Unlike Hitler, Trump did not spend 4 years (or 4 minutes) in any combat front line.
But…you know…the hate is so strong in the Trump Force…this is now, basically, a societal experiment to gauge the limits of hate blinding people to national survival. If the American people elect him (and–remember–there are HorseRace fuckers in this to the end), the experiment will say:
At the risk of committing sacrilege, many people who’ve been in spec ops will frankly admit that some of the people they served with in their spec ops unit were kinda psychotic.
“He’s not a war hero,” said Trump. “He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”
Yes, he only likes the ones who are strong enough not to be disturbed by the constancy of killing, or witnessing death, or facing death. The others are wusses. Like John McCain was.
I hope he realizes that PTSD was noted among returning veterans of WW2. Then it was called ‘shell shock’ or ‘combat stress.’ But I guess only the weaker soldiers were affected.
I can only imagine how he feels about those who avoided the draft by complaining about bone spurs.
As a Vietnam vet who transported in artillery and transported out body bags, I can tell you that even that fucks you up, for a very long time, if not forever. Stick with it, don’t stop going to therapy, and never ever let anyone else, or yourself, question what you are experiencing. War is hell. You’ve been there and back. We are glad you are back.
I would have thought exact that in normal election years… but this time, their statement, if any issued, will have in it “I never said that” and “dishonest media” and “crooked Hillary”… that’s what I expect.
Yeah, well, I don’t doubt that, just as Trump likes people who “weren’t captured,” he doesn’t think too much of those who get shot or blown up, either. He likes people who dodge bullets and bombs. Only weak people get hurt. Right? Right?
Thank you for your service, and keep going! I meet people with PTSD just about every week, from an assortment of causes, in a variety of church basements. It’s as real as it gets.
I’m beginning to think the Oranganus has a TBI himself.
Having seen some of the atrocities of war, anyone in that room who doesn’t have some form of mental trauma is Trump’s kind of human. Apathetic and out of touch.
Now do you see why his veteran outreach guy is a preening, half-crazed pogue with no combat experience who struts around in his “look at me I’m a veteran” hat and talks and acts like he’s Audie fucking Murphy?
I know nothing of war personally. But I’m the late-in-life son of a World War II vet. My dad was with the First Marine Division at Guadalcanal and then Peleiu. Besides him, four of my great uncles (because late-in-life son) were combat vets, all in the ETO. My Dad’s brother in law was in theater with him though they never met. His brother is buried in that cemetery you see in the first scene in Saving Private Ryan.
And I’m here to tell you, with all due love and reverence for the sacrifice of their youths–and one of their lives–for me, that of the ones who came back, each and every one of them was profoundly fucked up by the experience in ways that shaped them and their behavior for the rest of their lives. All of them were profoundly psychologically wounded by it, as surely as my dad lost most of the use of his middle two fingers to bayonet he stopped with his bare hand one night. None of them got any treatment for it. Because they didn’t, in those days. And, with one possible exception, all of them were “strong” men. Men of immense mental toughness. Strong because, whatever else the war did to them, it didn’t make them monsters despite the monstrous things they saw, did and had done to them.
This pile of human excrement is, quite simply, the most loathsome human being ever to obtain the nomination of a major party for the presidency of the United States. And that’s saying something.
How can this idiot say something to damage his support amongst the Military, one of his primary constituencies? This is the height of madness. Trump’s Razor strikes again.
