XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, alt.atheism, alt.military.usa   
   From: X@Y.com   
      
   Only traitors vote Trump.   
      
   Politics   
   Donald Trump's Military Cowardice Goes Beyond His 5 Draft Deferrals   
   He continuously disrespects those who actually served.   
   By Lincoln Anthony Blades   
      
      
   When I look at President Donald Trump, I see a pot-bellied, 71-year-old   
   man with a doughy frame. But in 1968, when he was a 22-year-old   
   University of Pennsylvania graduate, Trump was a tall, fit athlete who   
   played football, tennis, and golf. His age and clean medical history   
   qualified Trump as a perfect candidate for the draft to serve in the   
   United States Army and fight in the Vietnam War, but he avoided combat   
   after receiving a 1-Y medical deferment, which he has said was due to   
   "bone spurs in his heels." More than half a million American men were   
   stationed in Vietnam by the end of that year, which was the bloodiest 12   
   months of the conflict. On the day of Trump's graduation from the   
   University of Pennsylvania, 40 Americans were killed in Vietnam,   
   according to The New York Times.   
      
   The son of Fred Trump, a wealthy New York real estate developer, Donald   
   Trump did what many other wealthy young men were allowed to do: He dodged   
   the draft. Between 1964 and 1972, a few months before the draft ended, he   
   received five deferments — in addition to his "bone spurs" claim, the   
   other four were based on his educational status. He received two   
   deferments while he attended Fordham University from 1964 to 1966, and   
   two more after transferring to the Wharton School at the University of   
   Pennsylvania.   
      
   As a draft dodger, Trump never knew the horrors of war, but in 1997, he   
   laughed when telling radio host Howard Stern that avoiding sexually   
   transmitted diseases was like his "personal Vietnam." "It is a dangerous   
   world out there. It’s scary, like Vietnam. Sort of like the Vietnam era,”   
   Trump said to Stern, discussing his sex life. "I feel like a great and   
   very brave soldier.”   
      
   Today, Trump struggles to recall the most basic facts about the medical   
   condition that was the basis for his final deferment. He doesn't remember   
   the name of the doctor who provided him with the note of proof and has   
   repeatedly failed to provide a copy of it to The New York Times. He's   
   also forgotten which of his heels had the spurs, now just claiming it was   
   both. (During the 2016 presidential election, the affliction wasn't noted   
   by Dr. Harold Bornstein, a physician who performed a physical on Trump   
   and found that he had "no significant medical problems." in his medical   
   history)   
      
   Unlike the 2,709,918 soldiers who fought in Vietnam, Trump never served.   
   He wasn't injured like the 304,000 Americans who fought in the war, or   
   among the more than 58,000 killed in combat. Despite this inexperience,   
   he is now in charge of the U.S. armed forces, the Army, the Navy, the Air   
   Force, the Coast Guard, and the Marine Corps as commander-in-chief. As   
   president, he is tasked with dictating to all military generals and   
   admirals which battles should be fought, where they should be fought, and   
   who gets to fight in them on behalf of the United States.   
      
   He is certainly not the first American leader to receive draft   
   deferments. Former vice president Joe Biden received five student   
   deferments, former VP Dick Cheney received five deferments, and former   
   president Bill Clinton received deferments and even penned a letter to an   
   ROTC officer thanking him for "saving me from the draft." (It should also   
   be noted that before Clinton's administration, LGBTQ servicemen and women   
   were banned from serving. In his time, the military's "don't ask, don't   
   tell" policy began, which forced them to conceal their identities or risk   
   being discharged, effectively condoning discrimination.) This column will   
   afford these men no absolution for their decisions, but what makes   
   Trump's behavior obscene is that despite having never served, he has   
   fashioned himself as the arbiter of military courage.   
      
   It was Trump who, as a presidential candidate in July 2015, dissed   
   Senator John McCain, a former prisoner of war for roughly five and a half   
   years during Vietnam, by stating, "I like people who weren't captured."   
   He publicly disrespected Khizr Muazzam Khan and Ghazala Khan, the gold-   
   star Pakistani-American parents of Army captain Humayun Khan, who was   
   killed in combat in 2004 and posthumously awarded a Purple Heart for his   
   bravery. Not only did Trump attack an immigrant family who made a   
   sacrifice for their adopted nation, but he even compared their loss to   
   the "sacrifices" he made while becoming a real estate tycoon. To insult   
   the family of Khan, who died at war at 27 — just two years older than   
   Trump was when he received his 4-F classification, permanently   
   disqualifying him from military service — by comparing it to his own   
   business ventures is a claim only made equatable in the mind of a man   
   with little recognition of his own internalized cowardice.   
      
   Now the president, the five-time draft dodger, is weakening the military   
   to satisfy his own bigotry.   
      
       https://twitter.com/pfpicardi/status/890220423367073792   
      
      
      
       https://twitter.com/rob_bennett/status/892417583919624192   
      
   On July 26, he announced via Twitter that transgender soldiers would no   
   longer be allowed to fight for their country, essentially promising to   
   ban transgender people from serving. Reneging on a past campaign promise   
   to support the LGBTQ community, he announced that he will reinstate a ban   
   that was lifted by the Obama administration just a year prior, citing   
   "military costs and disruption that transgender in the military would   
   entail."   
      
       https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/890193981585444864   
      
       https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/890196164313833472   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)