‘We Kept Our Oath’

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/12/opinion/veterans-trump-military.html

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I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic …

That is the start of the oath that members of Congress take upon assuming office. It’s also the oath that members of the military take when enlisting.

And I’m glad to see that military veterans are starting to call on Congress members to make good on their shared oath.

In an advertising campaign that began last week and is running in 14 House districts, veterans read the oath on camera and ask congressional Republicans to hold President Trump accountable for violating his own (very similar) oath. The campaign is part of the Defend American Democracy project, run by a coalition of groups alarmed by Trump’s behavior, including Republicans for the Rule of Law.

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“We kept our oath,” an Air Force veteran named Jeff says in one ad.

“Now Congressman Fitzpatrick has to keep his,” Alex, a Marine Corps veteran, says, referring to Brian Fitzpatrick, who represents a suburban Philadelphia district. “As a former F.B.I. agent, Congressman Fitzpatrick should know better,” she adds.

Veterans are effective messengers, because the military remains one of the few American institutions that’s widely trusted across the political spectrum. In a recent Gallup Poll, 73 percent of Americans said they had confidence in the military, compared with 38 percent for the Supreme Court, 36 percent for organized religion, 29 percent for public schools, 23 percent for both big business and newspapers and a mere 11 percent for Congress.

In a separate ad released yesterday — on Veterans Day — Elaine Luria, a freshman House Democrat who represents a district in southeastern Virginia, also reads the oath and explains what it means to her.

“I took that oath the first time when I was 17 years old and went to the Naval Academy and took it again upon every promotion during my 20-year Navy career and most recently now serving in Congress,” Luria says. “I didn’t come to Washington to impeach the president, but I also didn’t spend 20 years in the Navy to allow our Constitution to be trampled on.”

Impeachment is fundamentally a struggle for public opinion, as I’ve written before. Patriotism is a valuable tool in that struggle, especially when it’s wielded by people who have been willing to makes sacrifices for it. The contrast between their selflessness and Trump’s selfishness is jarring.

For more …

“I served in the Army from 2001 to 2006, deploying to Iraq in the summer of 2004,” Alan Pitts, a retired Army sergeant and an organizer of the Defend American Democracy project, wrote in USA Today recently. “I never thought I’d see a day when a service member was attacked for standing up for our country, but that’s exactly what I saw after Army Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman testified on Capitol Hill last week.”

Retired military officials face a dilemma in the Trump era: Speak up against the commander in chief, or stay silent and enable his behavior, write The Atlantic’s Kathy Gilsinan and Leah Feiger. “For now, the military’s apolitical ethos is stronger than some commentators have argued it should be; and in any case, Trump tends to have more support among veterans than the general public, though nearly half say he doesn’t listen enough to military advice, according to one poll.”

NPR’s Deirdre Walsh offers an overview of the public impeachment hearings, which start tomorrow.

Public testimony from William Taylor, George Kent and Marie Yovanovitch — “lifelong and apolitical foreign service people” — has the best chance to move public opinion, The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin argued recently. Adam Schiff, the House Democrat leading the inquiry, “is smart enough to lead off the hearings — the first of which likely will be the most heavily watched — with his strongest witnesses,” she writes.

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