Walz and the National Guard

There is ample reason to want to keep Walz far from the corridors of power. Regarding his military service, I understand how veterans would find his lies and exaggerations offensive. Personally, I object to Walz' awful hard-left record as a governor.

But what really chaps my backside is his quip that people have no use for a weapon "that I carried in war," by which the lying sack of folksy excrement means the AR-15 so popular with millions of law-abiding Americans, myself included.

He never "carried in war" anything, and the fact that he combines stolen valor and gun grabbing in a single throw-away lie tells me all I need to know about this sorry excuse for a man. Add the COVID snitch line and his enthusiasm for both late-term abortion and child sexual transitioning--

--and shoot, look at that. I've run right into Ricochet's sensible CoC.

Henry Racette (View Comment):

There is ample reason to want to keep Walz far from the corridors of power. Regarding his military service, I understand how veterans would find his lies and exaggerations offensive. Personally, I object to Walz’ awful hard-left record as a governor.

But what really chaps my backside is his quip that people have no use for a weapon “that I carried in war,” by which the lying sack of folksy excrement means the AR-15 so popular with millions of law-abiding Americans, myself included.

He never “carried in war” anything, and the fact that he combines stolen valor and gun grabbing in a single throw-away lie tells me all I need to know about this sorry excuse for a man. Add the COVID snitch line and his enthusiasm for both late-term abortion and child sexual transitioning–

–and shoot, look at that. I’ve run right into Ricochet’s sensible CoC.

I sure would like for Walz to identify any military that took AR-15s into combat.

I was with the Minnesota Air National Guard during these times and had heard of the sudden retirement issue and had heard assessments of the character of Tim Walz contemporaneously with these events. The usual (and shortened) version I heard was that a segment of the state guard leadership wanted him to be elected and assessed that as more likely if they approved his retirement instead of holding him to earlier commitments. While "cowardice" could have been an element in this tale I don't know of any other indicators that would make this convincing. In this respect I think your OP is accurate in a "more likely than not" sort of way.

The "stolen valor" is more troubling to me also but note that his transgressions are usually in allowing misunderstandings to proceed unchecked as opposed to outright lies about his service. To me this is just as bad as outright lying.

I'll differ strenuously, however, with your second point: "National Guard units have not been used for tip of the spear combat since the Korean War. They weren’t shipped to Vietnam at all, and they’ve since been used in combat zones in a support capacity." Your perception of the guard is similar to what I believed when I was in the active-duty component (1983-1989) and even in my early time in the guard when we referred to "total force" doctrine as "total farce" (insofar as the active component was often fiercely resistant to operational mission moving to the reserve components). But time gradually brought change and after 9-11 there were many guard and reserve units mobilized early and then deployed, often for longer periods than comparable active units in many operational roles (not just those characterized as "support"). The duration of early deployments was in part due to statutory limits on the number of times a unit can be mobilized and for how long . . . . (limits which were subsequently ignored) and the belief that we needed to get our full use of these units while we could. In 2002-2004 we saw active-duty units arrive after us and depart before us in deployed AOR locations. I can cite other examples of our post 9-11 Minnesota Guard air and army deployments that should suffice to make clear this change from the Vietnam era.

The “stolen valor” is more troubling to me also but note that his transgressions are usually in allowing misunderstandings to proceed unchecked as opposed to outright lies about his service. To me this is just as bad as outright lying.

This is the kind of behavior I would expect of most politicians.

Why? Plausible deniability.

I respectfully disagree.

At the time Walz’s unit was scheduled for deployment, almost half of the US military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan was made up of National Guard, Air National Guard and Marine Reservists.

This is the first 10 days of August 2005 via NBC News:

Six Marine Reserve snipers who were killed by small arms fire during a Marine offensive near the town of Haditha in western Iraq.

Two days later, 14 Marine Reserve troops from Ohio were killed when their amphibious assault vehicle was blown up by a roadside bomb that U.S. officials said later was three land mines stacked atop each other.

Also on Aug. 3, three members of the Georgia Army National Guard’s 48th Infantry Brigade were killed in Baghdad when a suicide bomber blew up his vehicle near the soldiers’ armored troop carrier.

On Aug. 9, five members of the Pennsylvania Army National Guard were killed — four of them in a single attack near Bayji.

Two other Pennsylvania guardsmen were killed in an attack Aug. 6, and one Marine Reserve member died Aug. 4 of wounds sustained in combat last November.

One Army Reserve soldier was among the 32 killed in action during the first 10 days of the month; another died when a civilian fuel truck collided with the Humvee in which he was traveling on a convoy mission.

So, don’t give me this “tip of the spear” nonsense.

IEDs and incoming rounds do not care about your enlistment status. Nor do they care about your MOS. JD Vance was a public relations officer (aka, journalist. Don’t let the media haters find out about that.) 132 service members with that MOS came home in a box. And for that to happen you have to be in-country, not campaigning on the iron range of Minnesota.