Here comes another “Swift Boat” attack to discredit a political opponent. It worked against presidential candidate John Kerry in 2004, but this time around Americans and veterans may not go along with it.
The discussion around Governor Tim Walz’s military service has become a focal point of political scrutiny. Reports indicate that the GOP has ramped up attacks on Walz’s record. Allegations have surfaced regarding potential inconsistencies in his service narrative, especially concerning his deployment during the Afghanistan War.
During the Democratic convention, Republicans backing the Trump campaign have accused him, among other things, of having abandoned his fellow soldiers by retiring from the National Guard to run for Congress in 2006, months before his unit deployed to Iraq. The instigator of these attacks has been the Republican Vice-Presidential candidate JD Vance, who served in the Marine Corps for four years. And they have been repeated by other prominent Republicans who are veterans, including 50 members of Congress who signed a letter this week claiming that Mr. Walz had lied and had “violated the trust” of other veterans.
Democratic military veterans have defended his record and advocacy for veterans and military families. Walz served 24 years in the Army National Guard, a tenure that should not be overlooked lightly, yet Republican critics are mounting what appears to be another “Swift Boat” attack.
The term “swift boating” refers to a political tactic used during the 2004 U.S. presidential campaign, where a group called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (SBVT) launched a campaign against Democratic nominee John Kerry. Kerry, a decorated Vietnam War veteran, faced allegations from the SBVT questioning the legitimacy of his military service and the circumstances under which he was awarded combat medals. The group’s claims were widely publicized, and they ended up doing great damage to the Democratic ticket; George W. Bush won the election. The allegations were later discredited and labeled as unfair or untrue political attacks, but the harm had been done and another underhanded practice was “normalized”. The incident gave rise to the term “swiftboating” as a way to describe similar smear campaigns in politics.
While in 2004 veterans were taken in by what turned out to be false allegations, today their reaction may be different. “Name-calling, talking about people’s record, like, that’s not helpful,” said Vince Young, 32, a former Marine Corps mortarman and undecided voter who lives in Charlotte, N.C. Young, like so many others, is focused on the issues that matter to the average person, primarily the economy. He said that seeing one veteran disparaging another turned him off.
Indeed, the strategy that worked in 2004 today may backfire spectacularly. Donald Trump never served in the military, and it is well known that he got five deferrals to avoid service at a particularly dangerous time in history. He is widely mocked as “Cadet Bone Spurs” because that was the basis for the deferrals, bone spurs. And even they turned out to be faked.
What’s more, his contempt for the military and repeated attacks and mockery of those who have served is notorious, epitomized by his attacks against Senator John McCain, whom he called “a loser” for having been captured by the Viet Cong during the Vietnam War, and his infamous attacks against the “Gold Star” families in his 2016 presidential campaign.
In 2019 then-President Donald Trump even boasted to his advisors that he made up a fake injury to avoid military service, because “I wasn’t going to Vietnam,” his former lawyer told lawmakers during testimony. Similarly, while Vance was deployed to Iraq for about six months in 2005 as a military journalist, he never experienced combat and in his 2016 memoir, he stated, “I was lucky to escape any real fighting”.
At the time that Trump attacked Khizr Muazzam Khan and Ghazala Khan, the Pakistani American parents of United States Army Captain Humayun Khan, who was killed in the 2004 Iraq War, the Vietnam Veterans of America felt compelled to issue a statement taking a stand on Trump’s disparagement of the military and those who sacrifice their lives to serve their country: “It is especially reprehensible when that individual is seeking to become the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of our nation” they wrote. “To lash out and disparage a family whose son gave his life defending this country is both shocking and disgraceful…And though Trump may never have spent a day in uniform, his disdain for the sacrifice of this young man and all who have made the ultimate sacrifice in defense of our Constitution is singularly un-American.”
It is one of the conundrums of Trump’s ascent in politics that a man who despises his country, its institutions, its Constitution and its military, has become a symbol of patriotism to the MAGA far right.
Let his allies attack Walz’s military record, it will give the Democrats ammunition to delve into Trump’s own military courage and valor.
