ANALYSIS – Everything else is just noise. As the battle between our two VP candidate veterans gets hotter, let's not lose sight of one simple fact.
When their country called them both to go to Iraq, during the very same year, JD Vance went, Tim Walz did not.
As Kamala Harris's new running mate, Walz's controversial National Guard service is suddenly causing her sleepless nights. And Donald Trump's former Marine running mate, Vance, is the one keeping her up.
Both are veterans. Walz served 24 years in the National Guard as a ‘weekend warrior' primarily in peacetime, with little risk of seeing combat until the start of the Iraq war in 2003.
Vance, meanwhile, joined the Marine Corps for a four-year active-duty enlistment after the Iraq war began.
In 2005 both Vance and Walz were in a position to be deployed to Iraq.
Walz was ‘conditionally' the Command Sergeant Major of an artillery battalion, while Vance was a junior ranked Combat Correspondent.
His official biography on the Minnesota state website says, “Command Sergeant Major Walz retired from the 1-125th Field Artillery Battalion in 2005.”
However, we have since learned, while he did ‘conditionally' reach the rank of command sergeant major near the end of his service, he officially retired one rank below as a master sergeant. This, because he never completed the requirements for the higher ranks as he had committed to.
After a barrage of criticism, his official bio on the Harris campaign site has since been updated. His governor bio has not been corrected.
Meanwhile, to be clear, a Combat Correspondent isn't the same as a ‘public affairs specialist' as some partisan critics have claimed, or a cushy office job, as some in the liberal media have idiotically stated.
Both men would be expected to be in a combat zone in Iraq. Ironically, as a Combat Correspondent, Vance was more likely to serve with a front line combat unit than Walz at an artillery battalion HQ.
However, only one of them found out for real.
After publicly stating he was ready to deploy with his unit, Walz decided to sneakily retire instead, letting his unit go without him.
In March 2005, Walz wrote in a press release: “As Command Sergeant Major I have a responsibility not only to ready my battalion for Iraq, but also to serve if called on.”
But Walz lied. And he never deployed with his unit, which reportedly performed exceptionally. Meanwhile, Vance answered his call and deployed to Iraq.
Vance did not see combat directly during his six-month tour but was in an active combat zone. Walz didn't do either.
Vance did serve with a Marine aviation unit in Iraq and went into the field with Civil Affairs Marines. He was ready to see combat and very much could have, but fortunately, or unfortunately, did not.
I was lucky to escape any real fighting,” he said in his 2016 memoir, Hillbilly Elegy. Vance left the Marine Corps honorably in 2007 as a corporal to attend Ohio State University.
But Vance left with strong impressions from his time in Iraq. Something Walz never gained.
Task and Purpose reported:
As a Marine, Vance wrote, he never saw direct combat, but he would accompany other Marines in hostile areas, including one civil affairs mission that left a strong impression.
“On our particular mission, senior marines met with local school officials while the rest of us provided security or hung out with the schoolkids,” Vance writes “One very shy boy approached me and held out his hand. When I gave him a small eraser, his face briefly lit up with joy before he ran away to his family, holding his two-cent prize aloft in triumph. I have never seen such excitement on a child's face.”
The moment stuck with Vance.
“As I stood and surveyed the mass of children of a war-torn nation, their school without running water, and the overjoyed boy, I began to appreciate how lucky I was: born in the greatest country on earth, every modern convenience at my fingertips, supported by two loving hillbillies, and part of a family that, for all its quirks, loved me unconditionally,” Vance wrote. “At that moment, I resolved to be the type of man who would smile when someone gave him an eraser.”
The bottomline, when our nation called them both to war, one went, the other did not.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.
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“Every Marine is basically a rifleman”. That is a foundational tenet of the USMC. Cooks, clerks, and other REMF’s (lovingly called Rear Echelon Mother F#%&ers by the ‘grunts’) are all weapon trained and qualified.
In Stanley Kubrick’s movie “Full Metal Jacket” about Marines in Vietnam, actor Matthew Modine plays Marine J.T. Davis, nicknamed “Joker”, a combat correspondent attached to the “Stars and Stripes” publication.
J.T. Davis, a.k.a. “Joker”, was Vietnam’s version of JD Vance…both were assigned duties as combat correspondents.
R.M. “Zeb” Zobenica
Capt. USMC (Ret)
demodopes never do!