Draft Dodger Trump Doesn’t Mind Sending Others To War

Why are Republicans so unwilling to speak up as this President with no military, no diplomatic and no elective office experience is recklessly making threats of imminent war with North Korea? His record shouldn’t give anyone confidence that he has a clue as to the appropriate or traditional diplomatic methods to avoid war.

This President chose to avoid military service during the Vietnam war with a questionable draft-deferment based on note from his doctor. Then he lied and claimed to have been given a high draft number rather than a medical deferment. President Trump played football, tennis, squash and golf in college. There is no record of anything in his college medical records that suggested he had any physical impairments. However, after graduating from college in the spring of 1968 at the height of the Vietnam war he suddenly developed a medical condition that made him ineligible to serve his country.  He mysteriously obtained a letter from his doctor diagnosing him with heel spurs making him ineligible for the draft.  In an interview with The New York Times in July, 2016, Mr. Trump said the bone spurs had been “temporary” — a “minor” malady that had not had a meaningful impact on him. When asked, he couldn’t remember which foot was effected.

This President not only used a questionable medical deferment to avoid service in Vietnam, he couldn’t even honor Senator John McCain, a distinguished Vietnam War hero. McCain was held captive and tortured in a Vietnamese prison camp during the War. In 2015, this President cowardly said this about Senator John McCain at the Family Leadership Summit in Iowa.

“He’s not a war hero … He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”

This President belittled the Khan family, Gold Star parents of a slain American soldier, after they spoke at the Democratic National Convention in 2016. The Khan’s 27-year-old son, Humayun Khan, an Army captain, was killed in a car bombing in 2004 in Iraq trying to save other troops.

What kind of a Commander-in-Chief insults an American war hero and disparages the family of a slain American soldier? It’s clear this President lacks any respect or understanding of the military he commands.

This President has shocked and frightened the world with his cavalier threats to North Korea of “fire and fury like the world has never seen.” Apparently, he didn’t even consult with his military advisors before making these off the cuff blasts at North Korea. He followed up with more over the top warnings that our military is “locked and loaded.”

This is a President that avoided military service over a sudden onset bone spur, mocked a national war hero and belittled a family that gave their son in service to America. This is a President that can’t be trusted with the most powerful nuclear arsenal in the world.

Republicans have promised over and over that President Trump would become more presidential as he grew into the office. They have assured us that on the job training would end the chaos and somehow resolve his incompetence. Both Iowa Senators Ernst and Grassley offered this reassurance just prior to Trump’s inauguration. They both predicted he would moderate in office.

“The institution of the presidency tends to moderate not just your views but what you can do and what you think you can do,” Grassley said. “Everybody, whether they’re from the right or left as a candidate, once they’re elected president the institution of the presidency moderates their views … I think that comes from the fact that you really don’t know what it is to be president until you get there.”

“He was extremely thoughtful,” Ernst said of Trump. “He was an intent listener and if there were points that I raised that he had questions about, his questions were thoughtful and much deeper than what you might see in so many characters on Twitter… [Trump] truly understood the direction America needs to go. More so than you might hear with all the rhetoric out there, I think he is a very compassionate person. He doesn’t exhibit that. I wish he would show that more.”

It’s time that Senators Ernst and Grassley review their appraisal of Trump. The realists have been predicting that a world crisis like the North Korean threat should be our greatest worry. It appears the realists were correct. Trump doesn’t become more presidential in a crisis; he becomes increasingly unhinged from reality.  Senator Ernst and Grassley must step up and curb Trump’s madness before it’s too late. You can’t recall nuclear missiles.

by Rick Smith
Posted 8/15/17