What's Valor Got to Do With It?

"The Troops" are more than a slogan

Sep 06, 2024

There’s been a lot of news this week. One thing that has stuck with me is the kerfuffle about former President Donald Trump’s recent visit to Arlington National Cemetery with a Gold Star Family.

I was and am very angry about it. My husband is a veteran of the United States Coast Guard. I’m proud of my husband’s service. His time in the Armed Forces helped him grow into himself in important ways that have shaped everything about our lives since then in good and hard ways. I know enough military families to know that everyone’s service is different and that our experience is not unique.

But, there is something sacred about their service. I don’t mean that religiously or spiritually, but to mean special. There is something special and important about the fact that every day, regular citizens volunteer to protect and defend our country and our allies around the world, at sea, in the sky, and at and beyond our borders, and they do a really good job.

We send all of our military members to do things that the rest of us rather wouldn’t. We ask them to set aside their personal feelings about their mission and do their duty as commanded by the President of the United States. As with anything worth doing, there is danger and risk. And I know that if something had happened to my husband in the course of his service, I would have complicated feelings about that.

So, when former President Donald Trump laid a wreath on the grave of a soldier at Arlington National Cemetery and used it as a photo op for his campaign1, I had feelings.

Most of them are not about this family. If this were my loved one, and a former president they admired offered to accompany me to their grave and hear their story, that would be deeply meaningful to me.

I might offer to speak about that admiration if I were in their shoes. I might encourage others to take the former President’s care as evidence that this was a good person to vote for. I might do a lot of things. I feel grateful that I’m not in that position.

My feelings about former President Trump’s behavior are less generous. As recently as a few weeks ago (perhaps inspiring the visit to Arlington), the President said winning the Medal of Freedom was “actually” better than winning the Medal of Honor:

“The civilian version, it’s actually much better because everyone that gets the Congressional Medal of Honor, they’re soldiers. They’re either in very bad shape because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets or they’re dead.”

-Former President Donald J. Trump

When he was President, he skipped visiting a cemetery for Americans killed in World War II in France because it was filled with “losers” and “suckers.” He also famously said of John McCain during his 2016 presidential campaign, “I prefer soldiers who don’t get caught.”

I rehash all of this because it bothers me.

I love America. I am proud of our country2. And for four years of my life, I saw what full-time service to our country looks like. It looks like being away from your family for months at a time. It looks like sleeping in cramped quarters with lots of other people. It looks like running into the eye of the hurricane when others are running out. It means working in remote locations on equipment that hasn’t been updated in decades. It means standing watch when it’s your turn, just in case. It means moving where and when you get assigned. It means saying goodbye…a lot. It’s hard on your body, your family, and your soul. Our service members make tangible, long-lasting sacrifices for our country even under the best circumstances.

And it bothers me that the would-be commander-in-chief of these armed forces doesn’t seem to know how to respect their service unless there is something in it for him3.

It also bothers me because almost no one in America serves in our Armed Forces. There are about 18 million veterans (6% of the adult population in the United States), and our current military is about 1% of the US Population. With numbers like that, I wonder if most people quietly agree with the former President and feel that service to our country is for chumps.

I don’t think the service and sacrifice our servicemembers makes them beyond rebuke or always right4. But I do think that they are worthy of respect. We have enjoyed over a century of almost uninterrupted peace in the continental United States of America. For a nation as full of opportunity, wealth, and resources as ours, that is almost unheard of in the course of human history.

Some people cynically say that war is good for the economy. That may be true, but peace is better. You can look no further than the life and comfort we enjoy in the United States every day. We have the largest GDP in the entire world - with an economy nearly $10 trillion larger than our closest competitor (China). Our per capita income is “only” the 8th highest in the World, but in terms of large countries, our income per person is lightyears ahead of China, India, and other countries with large populations.

It’s so easy to say, “America shouldn’t be the world’s police,” but every day, the relatively peaceful world that we have nurtured and led is spreading wealth around the world, and 130,000 people are lifted out of extreme poverty. This means cleaner water, cleaner air, more education, more innovation, and a brighter future for all of us. And do you know what makes that possible? Conditions of relative peace led by the United States foreign policy and backed by our military.

I have complex thoughts on things like nuclear deterrence, the War on Terror, our withdrawal from Afghanistan, how and if we should be involved in conflicts in Sudan, Gaza, Ukraine, and, and, and…

But, I think that as a nation, we are all guilty of taking our military men and women and their service for granted. We may not be as crass about it as the former President. But we take for granted the peace and stability that generations of Americans have invested in, devoted, and given their lives for. We owe it to them to be thoughtful in who we give the authority to make decisions with their lives not just the Commander and Chief, but also our Congressional Representatives.

And I hope that when we vote in November, we think not just about our own ideas of what the next President, Congress, or representative at any level might do for us but how they will treat the responsibility and lives that we entrust them with.

What's Valor Got to Do With It?

"The Troops" are more than a slogan

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