It’s like the Grey Lady would think that all combat veterans are snowflakes and SJWs, that they think it’s great that the military is more focused on ‘climate change’, raaaaacism, CRT, and the gender confused rather than protecting the U.S., and should run as Democrats (free read at Yahoo)
New Generation of Combat Vets, Eyeing House, Strike From the Right
In early 2019, as the Defense Department’s bureaucracy seemed to be slow-walking then-President Donald Trump’s order to withdraw all U.S. forces from Syria, Joe Kent, a CIA paramilitary officer, called his wife, Shannon, a Navy cryptologic technician who was still in Syria working against the Islamic State group.
“‘Make sure you’re not the last person to die in a war that everyone’s already forgotten about,’” Kent said he told his wife. “And that’s exactly what happened,” he added bitterly.
The suicide bombing that killed Kent and three other service members days later set off a chain of events — including a somber encounter with Trump — that has propelled Kent from a storied combat career to single parenthood, from comparing notes with other anti-war veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan to making increasingly loud pronouncements that the 2020 presidential election was stolen and that the Jan. 6, 2021, rioters are political prisoners.
In five weeks, Kent, 42, a candidate for a House seat in Washington state that was long represented by a soft-spoken moderate Republican, may well be elected to Congress. And he is far from alone.
A new breed of veterans, many with remarkable biographies and undeniable stories of heroism, are running for the House on the far right of the Republican Party, challenging old assumptions that adding veterans to Congress — men and women who fought for the country and defended the Constitution — would foster bipartisanship and cooperation. At the same time, they are embracing anti-interventionist military and foreign policies that, since the end of World War II, have been associated more with the Democratic left than the mainline GOP.
In other words, they’re mirroring the true Conservative base, who do not want all the unnecessary interventionism, who are pushing for freedom, liberty, and limited government, who are tired of all the elites, including the Republican elites, ie, GOPe, and want to stand up for We The People. This makes Elites like the NY Times upset.
Beyond their right-wing leanings, all share in common a deep skepticism about U.S. interventionism, borne of years of fighting in the post-9/11 war on terrorism and the belief that their sacrifices only gave rise to more instability and repression wherever the United States put boots on the ground.
Where earlier generations of combat veterans in Congress became die-hard defenders of a global military footprint, the new cohort is unafraid to launch ad hominem attacks on the men who still lead U.S. forces.
“I worked for Milley. I worked for Austin. I worked for Mattis,” Don Bolduc, 60, a retired brigadier general challenging Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., said of Gen. Mark Milley, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the current and former defense secretaries, Lloyd Austin and Jim Mattis. “Their concerns centered around the military-industrial complex and maintaining the military-industrial complex, so as three- and four-star generals, they can roll right into very lucrative jobs.”
It is time to stop intervening in everything, and, when we do get involved, it needs to make sense, be targeted, and go there to win. Going after Afghanistan and Iraq were the right things to do: how we did it was the problem. We weren’t there to kick ass and take names, we were there to “nation build”, which is why we were in Afghanistan for 20 years. And pretty much nothing to show for it.
It’s a long, long piece, and, reading between the lines, a hit job, painting them all as far right wackjobs who Hate Democracy. It’s all the NY Times knows.
Read: NY Times Seems Pretty Upset That Combat Veterans Would Be Running For The House As Republicans »