No other father of a dead Marine, officer or otherwise, is in the spotlight to expose his grief. I think President Trump's comments were wrong, very political and indecent. The fact Trump was crude and rude does not pass the flag to Kelly to solve the tabloid facts to the media.
Current Chief of Staff John Kelly has a very important role to play in the country's protections and it's business. He needs to be left to that job and not dragged back into a personal grief.
I think if the media wants to explore the relationship the military and its families have with the country, it is a difficult and possibly impossible task.
The military has a job to do. It has, in decades since Vietnam, been asked to protect the country when there was no profound danger to the USA. The Domino Theory was the asinine reason for Vietnam. Yet, we lost over 50,000 troops and the dead in Vietnam was more than a million.
If there is to be a conversation about the USA military, it's families and the role the country has asked it to play, start there. Start with the fact the Vietnam War was AMONG the most unjustified use of the USA military. Start there and then go forward. What will be discovered is that the American citizen, in the role of a military soldier, is completely and absolutely disrespected for the sacrifice when the decision to go to war includes idiocy and greed.
START THERE! Not with a grieving father that happens to be a General.
Start with the fact there are times BY DESIGN when the only place for a high school graduate to find work is in military service. Then realize that soldier is defending a country that sends him or her into a war theater for the purpose of Wall Street greed. THEN, ask the families about the honor their son or daughter felt when he/she served in contrast to the the travesty of that death. Go ahead. But, don't give the American media an uptick in ratings to bolster the wrong way forward of the next idiotic war of this country!
