Happy Memorial Day. This weekend towns will throw parades, friends and family will visit cemeteries, and communities will reconnect at barbecues, swimming pools, and football games to inaugurate the summer. During these festivities I ask that you take a moment to pause. For one minute, reflect and remember. Give remembrance to 1.4 million American combat deaths, stretching from the Revolutionary War to today. In particular, consider the 7,057 uniformed men and women who have been killed in the ongoing Global War on Terror. They’re numbers not mentioned often enough by our politicians. But I...
The No Good, Cowardly Chickenhawk John Bolton
When President Joe Biden announced a new date for the full withdrawal of U.S. military forces from Afghanistan, there arose like clockwork a great, melancholic moan from the same media figures who have been defending the war for the past 20 years. Perhaps none was so despondent as John Bolton, who as Donald Trump’s National Security Advisor himself abetted the delay of a prospective exit. So when I first read Ambassador Bolton’s recent article at Foreign Policy—‘Bring the Troops Home’ Is a Dream, Not a Strategy—how could I, as the founder of BringOurTroopsHome.US, not take it as a personal...
How State Legislators Can Bring Our Troops Home
In summer blockbusters and other entertainment, the United States Armed Forces are almost always portrayed through the lens of their most elite units, such as the Navy SEALS or the Army Rangers. But while the special forces are heroes in their own right, they’re not the most irreplaceable piece on the board. That designation falls to the humble National Guard, the real backbone of America’s military. I’ve served in the Marine Corps, the U.S. Army, and the Idaho National Guard. In my deployments to Afghanistan, I found the Guard to be the best trained of them all. Numbering nearly 350,000 men...
How Donald Trump Is Closing the Door on the Afghan War
The lame duck period has always been something of a dull, transitionary state in American politics. We’re more accustomed to presidents using their last moments of authority to pardon powerful friends and other unpopular favors. Contrary to these expectations, however, President Donald Trump is going into overdrive to end the longest war in American history. In 2016, Donald Trump promised that he would bring our troops home from Afghanistan. Four years after his historic victory, 4,500 U.S. soldiers (and even more contractors) remain in Central Asia. Now, in a last-minute attempt to fulfill...
Politicians Suffer Identity Crisis, Should Let Veterans Lead Instead
President Donald Trump withdraws U.S. troops from Syria and is broadly attacked. Hillary Clinton accuses fellow Democrat Tulsi Gabbard of being a “Russian asset,” and Congresswoman Gabbard, an Iraq War veteran and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, calls Clinton the “queen of warmongers.” Back when the Soviets really were the “evil empire” Reagan said they were, Democrats attacked Reagan for his aggressive stance. Today, Democrats demand hostility toward Russia, now that they’re no longer Communists. Read the full article at the Idaho State Journal.