Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate and town mayor Pete Buttigieg has been making a big deal about his heroic service during his five-month tour in Afghanistan.
Greg Kelly and Katie Horgan, both ex-Marines with actual combat duty, had some thoughts about that in their Wall Street Journal op-ed. So do I. Kelly and Horgan noted,
He [Buttigieg] entered the military through a little-used shortcut: direct commission in the reserves.
Not even a 90-day wonder—a pomeranian prince.
Especially this:
Mr Buttigieg spent some five months in Afghanistan, where he writes that he remained less busy than he’d been at City Hall, with “more time for reflection and reading than I was used to back home.” He writes that he would take “a laptop and a cigar up to the roof at midnight to pick up a Wi-Fi signal and patch via Skype into a staff meeting at home.”
It’s a mark of the quality of Buttigieg’s “service” that he had less work to do even than that of being a small-town mayor.
Honorable officers, when they’re short of tasks, go looking for more things to do to advance the mission, they don’t head up to the roof top to moonlight on Skype or hide out somewhere recreationally reading.
Oh, and Bob Dole felt no need to lean on his military service, much less his actual wounds, in order to campaign for office. Neither did Phil Hart or Daniel Inouye. But the unscathed rooftop pomeranian prince does.
Oh, it’s bragging to make a big deal on the campaign trail out of his whole 5 months of duty in Afghanistan, a significant fraction of his time spent goldbricking instead of looking for more ways to push his unit’s mission.
No exposé, either, he exposed himself with his bragging.
Eric Hines
From his websiite, way down the first page” “During his first term, Pete took a leave of absence to deploy to Afghanistan. As a Lieutenant in the Navy, Pete served with Americans from every part of the country, of every ethnicity and faith. He saw firsthand that when you bring Americans from different backgrounds together in common purpose, you can build the strongest fighting force in the world. And that’s exactly what we need now.”
Hardly bragging. And he disclosed his cigar smoking and leisure time on the rooftop (after midnight, apparently) to WAPO. Nobody had to do an expose.
Hard to believe that any politician would mention his or her military service while campaigning. And a goldbricking soldier? Now there’s a first!
There’s that Left morality we know so well. Somebody else is doing the thing, therefore it’s OK to do. The ethics, the morality of a behavior isn’t at all intrinsic in the behavior, it’s entirely situational. Ethics, morality, these are whatever is personally convenient.
Aside from that, the fact that soldiers goldbrick only shows how long and how widespread the misbehavior is. That in no way legitimizes the behavior–especially for an officer.
Eric Hines