{"id":75516,"date":"2017-10-22T10:57:08","date_gmt":"2017-10-22T14:57:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=75516"},"modified":"2017-10-22T16:07:14","modified_gmt":"2017-10-22T20:07:14","slug":"alex-horton-for-some-veterans-john-kellys-remarks-add-to-a-worrying-military-civilian-divide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=75516","title":{"rendered":"Alex Horton: For some veterans, John Kelly\u2019s remarks add to a worrying military-civilian divide"},"content":{"rendered":"

Alex Horton, former VoteVets writer and propagandist for the Shinseki Department of Veterans’ Affairs, now writes for the Washington Post as a hand-wringer over John Kelly’s remarks to the press the other day. Horton claims<\/a> that Kelly’s comments “alarmed some of those who study relations between the military and society”. Who might these people be? Well, Horton only includes the remarks from one person – Phil Carter. <\/p>\n

Phil Carter used to write for the Post in a weekly column that was anti-George Bush, then he became a founding member of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America when they made the transition from anti-Bush group, OpTruth. Then Carter was Obama’s veterans advisor in the 2008 presidential campaign, and finally he became the Deputy Secretary of Defense for Detainee Affairs, a job from which he was fired because he couldn’t close Guantanamo detainee facility.<\/p>\n

So, you know, this is a totally unbiased evaluation of Kelly’s speech\/sarcasm if you didn’t notice.<\/p>\n

Kelly\u2019s words Thursday worried Carter and others. His somber ordering of how a dead service member is moved from battlefield to burial was a helpful glimpse for Americans who have not experienced that trauma. But Carter said he paired the idea with a belief that most civilians could not conceive \u2014 or intentionally fail \u2014 to understand that burden.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was odd. The military does not have a monopoly on loss and hardship,\u201d Carter said.<\/p>\n

Another moment also struck a dissonant note. When Kelly ended his remarks by accusing Rep. Frederica S. Wilson (D-Fla.) of using a dead soldier for political points, he told reporters he was only interested in questions from those who had a direct connection to those killed in combat.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The military does, however, have a monopoly on “loss and hardship” in service to the nation as protectors of the Constitution, something that Carter and many in the journalistic community have forgotten. The American public has overwhelmingly given high marks to the military, in the form of poll results, for the past two decades as compared to the press and politicians.<\/p>\n

Anyone who doesn’t think that Francesca Wilson wasn’t standing in the blood of Sergeant LaDavid Johnson and using the grief of his widow for political points among the anti-Trump crowd hasn’t been paying attention to Horton’s pieces in the Post and any other piece in the Post which doesn’t like that Hillary Clinton didn’t win the election – and now the Post and Horton are trying to drag Kelly and the rest of the military down to their level.<\/p>\n

Thanks to Chief Tango for the link.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alex Horton, former VoteVets writer and propagandist for the Shinseki Department of Veterans’ Affairs, now writes … Alex Horton: For some veterans, John Kelly\u2019s remarks add to a worrying military-civilian divide<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-75516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=75516"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75516\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=75516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=75516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=75516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}