J.D. Vance brings his ‘stolen valor’ roadshow to Kansas — and how it could backfire | Opinion
By now, you probably know that Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance is at the tip of the spear in attacking the military record of his opponent, Democratic VP nominee Tim Walz.
Ordinarily, I’d let the national media hash this one out, but it came to my attention earlier this week that Vance will be in Kansas on Thursday for a $5,000-to-$50,000-per couple dinner (apparently singles aren’t welcome in Vance World) where I expect he’ll keep on assaulting Walz’s decades of service to the National Guard.
What really caught my eye was that at this GOP campaign fundraiser, Vance, an Ohio senator, will be appearing with former Kansas Congressman, former CIA Director and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
And some of the same criticism that Vance is aiming at Walz, the governor of Minnesota, could backfire on Pompeo.
According to the questionnaire that Pompeo filled out for his nomination to CIA director, he served in the Army as platoon leader, troop executive officer and squadron maintenance officer for the 1st Squadron, Second Armored Cavalry in Germany from 1986 to 1989.
From 1989 to 1990, he was a student in the Armored Officer Advance Course in Kentucky. He wrapped up his service in Colorado as squadron adjutant, an administrative position with the 2/7 Cavalry, 4th Infantry Division.
After fulfilling his mandatory five years of service for attending West Point, Pompeo retired with the rank of captain to attend Harvard Law School.
Pompeo and Gulf War I
Pompeo’s service coincided with Operation Desert Shield and Operation Desert Storm, the first Gulf War, to chase Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s forces out of Kuwait, which he’d invaded and conquered.
In 2010, Pompeo’s first congressional run, he released a campaign ad touting his military service that was described thusly in the Topeka Capital Journal: “Over footage of tanks barreling their way across a battlefield, a narrator describes how Pompeo led an armored battalion to secure West Germany’s border and will now fight to protect the U.S. border with Mexico.”
I made a phone call on it myself, because the video in the ad clearly appeared to be from the Gulf War, not Germany. The answer I got was that the campaign ordered some b-roll footage of tanks from a video service and that’s what they got.
I didn’t pursue it any further because the voice-over was accurate. While I thought the footage was misleading, if I wrote about every campaign ad that’s misleading but not overtly false, I wouldn’t have time to do anything else.
And it was a different time, when most Americans just thanked veterans for their service, and didn’t comb through every detail of their service record and every public statement they ever made, looking for avenues of attack, like now.
I’ve never heard Pompeo claim to be a Gulf War veteran. But his friends in high places sure did on his behalf.
In January 2017, arguing for Pompeo’s confirmation as CIA director, Sen. Marco Rubio, Florida Republican, stated on the Senate floor that “Congressman Pompeo served our country in the Gulf War and since 2011, he has served the country in Congress.”
Uncorrected, it became a persistent error that appeared in stories by several major news organizations.
In April 2018, when Pompeo was up for promotion from CIA director to secretary of state, 51 members of the House of Representatives co-signed a letter urging the Senate to confirm him, which read, in part, “After graduating first in his class from the United States Military Academy at West Point (true), Michael Pompeo spent five years serving in the United States Army (true), including in the Gulf War (false).”
Notably, that letter was co-signed by all three Kansas Republican congresspersons at the time, Ron Estes, Roger Marshall and Lynn Jenkins, who all should have known better.
The discrepancy came to light after a tweet by former CIA spokesman Ned Price, who’s now a deputy to the U.S. representative to the United Nations, on April 20, 2018:
“It seems apparent from reliable sources that Mike Pompeo did NOT serve in the first Gulf War, but nearly half of his public bios —including his Wikipedia page — and contemporary write-ups claim he did. Is this something he’s been content to leave uncorrected?”
That tweet was followed by a spate of articles with headlines like this, from Fortune Magazine: “Pompeo’s War Record in Question Ahead of Secretary of State Confirmation.”
Walz’s record
So let’s compare that with Walz’s alleged misdeeds.
The case against Walz has three main points:
1) That he retired from the National Guard shortly before his unit was deployed to the war in Iraq, leaving his troops leaderless.
2) That he overstated his rank after retirement.
3) That in 2018, arguing for gun control, he made the statement: “We can make sure that those weapons of war, that I carried in war, is the only place where those weapons are at.”
Walz served 24 years in the National Guard and like Pompeo, he left the military when he was eligible, to pursue a more promising career path in the civilian world. Minnesota Guardsmen can retire at any time after 20 years, and Walz left months before his unit was deployed.
He held the rank of command sergeant major until he retired in 2005 to run for a congressional seat, which he won. He was originally described in his bio as a “retired command sergeant major,” but because he hadn’t completed the course of study to retain that rank permanently, he was officially retired one pay grade lower, at master sergeant.
Did Walz carry his weapon “in war?” He has said that was a misstatement on his part, because he was never deployed in a combat zone.
It’s worth noting, however, that he was deployed to Italy in a role supporting Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, which was considered part of the global war on terror.
While he was never in combat, Walz was awarded the Global War on Terrorism medal, according to The Guardian, which did a deep dive into Walz’s service record.
So do I think Pompeo stole valor? Do I think Walz did?
The answers are “no,” and “no.”
The real problem here is that the definition of stolen valor has been warped beyond all recognition for political purposes, largely by the Donald Trump campaign and especially by J.D. Vance.
Real stolen valor
Stolen valor isn’t about timing your retirement after years of honorable service, or the technicalities of Army retirement-benefit policy, or even the occasional misstatement about what you did in uniform.
Stolen valor is about claiming you served when you never did, or grossly inflating what you did do when in uniform.
The classic example of the real deal involves a former executive of this newspaper, The Wichita Eagle, and several other papers.
The late Darrow “Duke” Tully was publisher of the Arizona Republic and Phoenix Gazette in 1985, when he was forced out over an elaborate web of lies he’d built up over decades — claims that he’d been a hot-shot fighter pilot in an Air Force career that never existed.
Ousted from the Arizona papers, “Duke” landed at the tiny Ojai Valley News, in Ventura County, California, a few miles up the road from the papers where I worked at the same time in the 80s.
I later found out that before his lies and life unraveled, he’d been a publisher at the Pasadena Star-News, where I later worked as city editor; and here at The Wichita Eagle and Beacon, where he was business manager (more or less the equivalent of publisher) from 1973 to 1975.
In our archives, I found an old story where the Beacon identified him as a pilot and retired Air Force major. By the time he got caught in Arizona, he’d promoted himself to lieutenant colonel (retired) and acquired a number of unearned medals that he hung on a full-dress uniform he wore to public functions.
After Tully was exposed, journalists from papers where he’d worked put bumper stickers on their cars saying “I flew with the Duke.”
I wouldn’t. That would be the journalistic equivalent of stolen valor. Or something.
And to Mike Pompeo, and Tim Walz, I will say just this: Thank you for your service.
