{"id":83681,"date":"2018-12-23T10:30:41","date_gmt":"2018-12-23T14:30:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=83681"},"modified":"2018-12-22T19:26:15","modified_gmt":"2018-12-22T23:26:15","slug":"a-different-kind-of-stolen-valor-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=83681","title":{"rendered":"

A Different Kind Of Stolen Valor<\/h3>"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"viet-of-the-nam\"Photo by Rocklin Lyons<\/p>\n

Here’s a guest post from our very own Perry Gaskins. Perry was kind enough to school me a bit in copyrights, fair use, and protection of original expressions. I really appreciated that, and I try to walk with the angels in my posts. I can count on Perry to smack me if I stray. <\/p>\n

It’s no secret the news media has its fair share of hustlers, scoundrels, and fools. Still, only rarely does the press cross over to taking on the military in a personal manner. In a recent piece in Salon<\/i> the writer Lucian K. Truscott IV comments on the recent resignation of Secretary of Defense James Mattis with a story titled Good riddance to James Mattis, Trump\u2019s last general<\/i>:<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Salon Link<\/a><\/p>\n

According to Salon’s<\/i> own bio, Truscott is a graduate of West Point. Woven into the Mattis hit piece are also minor factoids about how Truscott was also once a platoon leader which is apparently supposed to show Truscott’s bonafides as a member of the warrior clan and resident Salon<\/i> expert on things military.<\/p>\n

But here’s the thing: What the Salon bio doesn’t show is that Lucian K. Truscott IV did indeed graduate from West Point in 1969, and was stationed at Fort Carson for the next 13 months. Then when it apparently became likely that Truscott would be shipped to Viet Nam, our future Salon<\/i> scribbler resigned his commission and received a discharge “under other than honorable conditions.” Evidently, and without putting too fine a point on it, when Truscott couldn’t be a REMF anymore, he decided to be a coward.<\/p>\n

Such a biographical omission, at least it seems to me, makes Truscott’s hypocrisy in the Mattis piece remarkable. What the piece also does is point out that not all stolen valor posers are those wearing a blinged-out biker vest, a do-rag, and hugging an emotional support dog. Sometimes they can hide in plain sight.<\/p>\n

And that would probably be more-or-less okay in the overall kharmic scheme of things, except that when the Army kicked Truscott to the curb, he didn’t fade into the background. Instead, he’s spent decades making a living by being a leftist press go-to guy for military issues. First at the Village Voice<\/i> and now at Salon<\/i>. Along the way, he’s also written six books. Most of those apparently having a military theme where Truscott is able to cash in on his West Point experience. Because, or so Truscott and Salon<\/i> would apparently have you believe, being a graduate of West Point is the same as, like James Mattis, spending decades in active service.<\/p>\n

My own view is that Lucian K. Truscott IV, on his best day, isn’t qualified to shine James Mattis’ shoes. And the real mystery is why Salon<\/i> pretends otherwise.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Photo by Rocklin Lyons Here’s a guest post from our very own Perry Gaskins. Perry was … <h3>A Different Kind Of Stolen Valor<\/h3><\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":657,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[332,118,386],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-83681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-guest-post","category-veterans-issues","category-west-point"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83681","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\/657"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=83681"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83681\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=83681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=83681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=83681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}