On ‘Stolen Valor’ and Contempt for Valor

In May 2005, after 24 years of military service with the Nebraska and Minnesota National Guard, vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz retired to continue to serve his state and his country for six terms in the U.S. House of Representatives and, subsequently, as Minnesota’s 41st governor. According to Task and Purpose, “the May 2005 date on […]

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In May 2005, after 24 years of military service with the Nebraska and Minnesota National Guard, vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz retired to continue to serve his state and his country for six terms in the U.S. House of Representatives and, subsequently, as Minnesota’s 41st governor.

According to Task and Purpose, “the May 2005 date on which Walz’s retirement became official was likely many months after he had ‘dropped his papers’ to inform his chain of command he intended to retire, beginning the process.”

Walz filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission as a candidate for Congress on February 10, 2005, three months before his retirement.

In a 2009 interview for the Library of Congress, Walz said he retired from the National Guard “to focus full time on running for Congress, citing concerns about trying to serve at the same time and the Hatch Act, which limits political activities for federal employees.”

Two months after Walz’s retirement, his unit would receive initial call-up orders deploy to Iraq. It mobilized to Camp Shelby Mississippi in September and finally deployed to Iraq in March 2006, ten months after Walz’s retirement.

Notwithstanding this reasonable and credible timeline, Republican vice-presidential nominee, Sen. JD Vance on Wednesday had the temerity to accuse Tim Walz of leaving the National Guard to avoid being deployed to Iraq.

Vance also seized on a remark by Governor Walz supporting gun control in which the governor said, “we can make sure those weapons of war, that I carried in war, are only carried in war,” to callously accuse Walz of “stolen valor,” one of the most slanderous charges one can make against a veteran’s honor and integrity.

Since Mr. Vance brought it up, let us talk about (stolen) valor on the part of the man about whom JD Vance “once worried was ‘America’s Hitler,” but whom he now idolizes: The GOP presidential candidate.

Is it valor to avoid military service, “sidestep the war in Vietnam,” thanks to a conveniently timed deferment based on questionable bone spurs?

What kind of valor is it to insult the valor of those men and women who have made the ultimate sacrifice for our country by referring to them as “losers” and “suckers”?

How can one cheapen valor more than by this reaction by the GOP presidential candidate to the gift of a Purple Heart medal by a veteran wounded in action in Iraq: “…Man, that’s like big stuff. I always wanted to get the Purple Heart…This was much easier.”

Is it valor to disparage a war hero, a man who spent more than five years as a Prisoner of War in a North Vietnamese prison and was subject to torture, by claiming “He’s not a war hero. He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured,”?

Can there be any more disrespect for valor than the cheapening of our nation’s highest military award for valor in combat than by with frivolous remarks such as, “As president, I wanted to give myself the Congressional Medal of Honor, but they wouldn’t let me do it…they said that would be inappropriate…”

This was not the first time that the GOP presidential candidate cheapened, diminished the Medal of Honor.

Is it valor to mock combat injuries, such as those sustained by eleven soldiers in a 2020 Iranian attack on a U.S. post in Iraq, by claiming, “I heard that they had headaches and a couple of other things…I’ve seen people with no legs and no arms… I can consider them to be really bad injuries.”?

Perhaps the vilest example of “stolen valor” by the 2024 presidential candidate occurred many years ago, when — as his adorers will claim — “he was just a youngster.”

Discussing the dangers of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) on a 1997 Howard Stern show, Trump claimed that “…more people were killed by women in this act than killed in Vietnam…”

When Stern praised Trump for being “braver than any Vietnam vet because you’re out there screwing a lot of women,” the “hero” replied, “Getting the Congressional Medal of Honor, in actuality.”

But that was not all.

Trump and Stern continued to compare avoiding STDs to serving in Vietnam and thus came the most disgusting, grotesque example of “stolen honor” this author has ever seen or heard.

“I’ve been so lucky in terms of that whole world. It is a dangerous world out there — it’s scary, like Vietnam. Sort of like the Vietnam era. It is my personal Vietnam. I feel like a great and very brave soldier.” Trump said.

As retired four-star Marine Corps General John F. Kelly said while discussing Trump’s numerous calumnies against our service members and veterans, “There is nothing more that can be said. God help us.”

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