Many veterans of the Global War on Terrorism feel extreme resentment toward Kamala Harris and the Democrat Party — and here’s why.
Harris and the Democrats have created a perfect storm of veteran disdain in that they have succeeded in uniting three once-inapposite groups behind Harris: the neocons who started the GWOT, the media and Democrats who undermined the veterans’ GWOT missions, and the generals who failed again and again and again at bringing the GWOT to a successful conclusion.
If you want to understand the prevailing veteran rage against Harris and love for Trump, you need to understand this unholy trinity that so many veterans loathe.
I’ll start with the neocon “chickenhawks.” Maybe it’s not fair to blame Liz Cheney for the GWOT as her father was its prime architect and not Liz herself, but she has come to serve as a symbol of the many advocates for useless, endless wars who never put their own lives (or the lives of their children) on the line, and who now support Kamala Harris. Liz Cheney stands as a symbol in this regard, and she stands for the many establishment Republicans who would rather support a radical Democrat than the only president in decades who did not start new wars.
The second leg of the unholy trinity is the Democrats and their media lackeys who helped us lose those wars — the same people those treacherous neocons have now allied themselves with.
The last leg of the trinity of veteran betrayal is the generals who could not win those same wars, retired from the military and went deep into the military-industrial complex, and now endorse Harris and demean Trump. These are generals like Stan McChrystal, who gave us such restrictive rules of engagement in Afghanistan that it cost the lives of so many troops. These are generals like John Kelly, whose counterinsurgency tactics solved so little in Al Anbar Province and who now libels the boss who fired him in The Atlantic magazine. These are generals like Michael Hayden, whose tenure at the National Security Agency did nothing to prevent 9/11, yet who found ways to use that tragic day as an excuse to spy on Americans.
These are the generals who led us in wars that they were not competent enough to win. Their leadership failed, no one was held to account, and now these same men stand proudly against the one president who would not tolerate those failures nor repeat them. This too feels like a betrayal.
Three groups, three betrayals. So many veterans feel like I do — not all, but many.