Trump’s Wars in His Year of Infamy

By Bill Doughty––

On Dec. 27, 2016, President Barack Obama and Japan’s then-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe placed wreaths at the USS Arizona Memorial and spoke at Pearl Harbor. Obama said, “This harbor is a sacred place.”

Several months later, Obama again made history when he went to Hiroshima and brought a message of healing and understanding with –– and for –– the people of Japan. During that trip, the 44th president visited Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni (photo above by Cpl. Nicole Zurbrugg).

While Obama was in Japan, Donald Trump, then a candidate for president, tweeted: “Does President ever discuss the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor while he's in Japan? Thousands of American lives lost. #MDW” (Twitter; 28 May 2016).

Trump and First Lady place wreath at USS Arizona Memorial Nov. 3, 2017. (PO2 James Mullen)

On a tour of the USS Arizona Memorial in 2017, Trump asked then-Chief of Staff John Kelly to explain the significance of the attack, showing he was “dangerously uninformed,” according to The Washington Post’s Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig, authors of “A Very Stable Genius.”

Kelly is a former U.S. Marine four-star general and a Gold Star father. 

Kelly has been quoted recently as telling friends this about Trump: ”The depths of his dishonesty is just astounding to me. The dishonesty, the transactional nature of every relationship, though it's more pathetic than anything else. He is the most flawed person I have ever met in my life.” Kelly praised retired Army Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, who was belittled and persecuted by Trump, for telling the truth during Trump’s impeachment hearings. “Here right matters.”

Trump castigated Kelly in a White House press conference Sept. 4. “I know John Kelly, he was with me, didn’t do a good job, had no temperament. And ultimately he was petered out. He was exhausted. This man was totally exhausted. He wasn’t even able to function in the last number of months,” Trump said, adding he asked for Kelly’s resignation.

President Trump and retired Marine

Kelly is considered a likely source to a story reported in the Atlantic magazine; he has not denied the report that Trump called service members “suckers” and U.S. war dead “losers.” Also, Trump called the late Senator John McCain a loser. Trump denies it, but he actually did call McCain “a loser” in Ames, Iowa, July 18, 2015.

Trump has repeatedly attacked McCain for his record of support for the Veterans Administration. Trump claims credit for VA Choice, but Obama signed that bill in 2014, and John McCain was one of the bill’s originators. Cindy McCain, the late senator’s widow, endorses former Vice President Joe Biden, not Trump, for president.

Trump fails to condemn right-wing domestic terrorism. Trump, a conspiracy promoter, has supported Q-Anon, even defending his retweets of a Q-Anon theory that former President Barack Obama and then-Vice President Joe Biden mistakenly killed the body double of Osama bin Laden, sponsor of the 9/11 attacks on the United States, including the World Trade Center and Pentagon. As part of that conspiracy, Q-Anon also accuses Biden of ordering the assassination of a team of Navy SEALs to cover up their so-called mistake. The commander in chief retweeted several related tweets.

Trump claims to love the military. But he belittles generals, including Gens. Kelly, Mattis, McMaster, McRaven, and McChrystal, among others. He takes away congressionally appropriated military funds to pay for his wall. He rescinds Pentagon orders and interferes in the military justice system, including pardoning war criminals.

U.S. Marines grind sections of the wall before installing concertina wire near the California-Mexico border, Nov. 14, 2018. (Lance Cpl. Jared Curtis)

He takes money from the military in order to construct a border wall, and he deploys troops inappropriately, including against migrants and protesters. 

Capt. Brett Crozier and Capt. Carlos Sardiello cut a cake at a change of command ceremony Nov. 1, 2019.

He belittled Navy Capt. Brett Crozier, former CO of USS Theodore Roosevelt, who called for help for his Sailors after an outbreak of COVID-19 aboard his ship earlier this year.

Trump refuses to confront Putin about reported Russian bounties on the heads of our troops in Afghanistan as he turns his back on the Kurds fighting ISIS and continues to offend NATO allies, South Korea, and other friends of the United States.

In 2020, Trump implies that pay raises to the military will buy their support. But he admits he likely doesn’t have the backing of senior, well-educated leaders. In fact, Trump accuses Pentagon military brass of being war profiteers.

Another of his former key administration officials, retired Army Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, one of Trump’s national security advisers, condemned Trump’s unwillingness to commit to a smooth transition of power after the election. “This is something that our founders feared," McMaster said. ”We have to demand that our leaders restore confidence in our democratic principles and institutions and processes.”

Trump and McMaster invited military service members to a luncheon at the White House, July 18, 2017.

On Sept. 7, 2020, at another White House press conference, Trump said, “I’m not saying the military is in love with me. The soldiers are. The top people in the Pentagon probably aren’t because they want to do nothing but fight wars so that all of those wonderful companies that make the bombs and make the planes and make everything else, stay happy.”

Is it possible Trump is projecting? He, himself, boasts about selling weapons and weapon systems to foreign nations, especially Saudi Arabia. He reportedly authorized selling F-35 stealth fighter jets to United Arab Emirates to persuade UAE to acknowledge normalization with Israel.

Trump famously boasted of being a “wartime president” in the fight against COVID-19. His “generals” in the pandemic war are CEOs of huge corporations, many of whom make a profit.

When he contracted the virus, Trump seemed to blame Sailors and Marines. A week later he appeared to blame Gold Star families. Here are some related haiku of Trump:

“It’s very hard when

you’re with soldiers, when you’re

with airman, … Marines”

+

“When they come over

to you it’s very hard to

say, “‘stay back, stay back.’”

(Fox News, 1 Oct 2020)

+

“Very, very hard

when you are with people from

the military”

(Fox News, 1 Oct 2020)

“would be a chance that

I would catch it … I met with

gold-star families”

+

“all came in and they

all talked about their son and

daughter and father”

+

“…an inch of my face

sometimes –– they want to hug me

and they want to kiss”

(Fox Business News; 8 Oct 2020)

He asks U.S. citizens to be “warriors” and to go into harm’s way without a unified national strategic plan, adequate testing, or mask mandates. 

HM2 Christopher Lopez inspects medical equipment during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The United States has about four percent of the world’s population and about twenty percent of the world’s death from COVID. As Trump seems to surrender to “an invisible enemy,” he treats citizens, including children, as kamikaze “warriors” –– pushing them to go back to schools and jobs no matter what.

Now Trump seems to be waging a war against a free and fair election, the rule of law, the U.S. Postal Service, and the Constitution itself. Trump seems hellbent on winning by any means necessary. Will he create his own “infamy” before election day and/or before he leaves office?

On Nov. 3, Americans have an opportunity to return to decency, integrity, healing, and understanding by voting for military Blue Star father Joe Biden and helping to elect Biden/Harris.

"Haiku of Trump: The Chasm, Schism & Isms of Donald J. Trump,” is available on Amazon Kindle and is free through Wednesday, Oct. 21.