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The Post’s and the Times‘ pieces on Tim Walz service record are more egregious and spurious than you’re probably able to imagine. The accusations come from two members of his unit who are clearly MAGA partisans and who floated them during his 2022 reelection campaign for Minnesota governor in coordination with Walz’s Republican opponent. The attacks aren’t just “like” the Swift Boat attacks from 2004. They’re literally the work of the same guy. Chris LaCivita was the strategist who ran the Swift Boat attacks in 2004 and cut the commercials. He’s now the co-manager of the Trump campaign. He started this and then handed it off to Vance. As David noted, even Politico headlined it as a “Swift Boat” attack. Politico!
The accusation, such as it is, is that Walz retired from service just before his unit was deployed to Iraq.
The first thing to note here is that career military people can retire. (Walz served for 24 years.) That’s how it works. If you’re needed, there’s something called stop-loss orders, which the Pentagon issues during periods of acute need; they not only prevent retirements but can involuntarily extend people’s period of enlistment. These were issued repeatedly during the Iraq War and in the years of active U.S. military involvement in Iraq. But the accusations break a lot further than this narrow point on any close inspection.
Walz served for 24 years in the Minnesota National Guard. He was never in combat but had multiple overseas deployments. He actually retired at 20 years but returned to service after 9/11 when he re-enlisted for an additional four years. (Presumably, if he were looking to get out of foreign or war zone deployments, he wouldn’t have done that.) The Trump campaign and the two accusers from Minnesota make it like Walz put in his papers just in advance of deployment. That’s not true. Walz successfully ran for Congress in 2006 and there’s abundant evidence that at least from early 2005 he was discussing with confidants in his unit whether or not to retire to run for Congress. His newly announced campaign put out a press release in March 2005 which said that it was possible that “all or a portion of Walz’s battalion could be mobilized to serve in Iraq within the next two years.” Walz officially retired in May 2005 and his unit got initial call up orders in July 2005. They were eventually deployed to Iraq in March 2006.
The overriding point here is that Walz didn’t just say, well, I might get deployed. I’m outta here. It is well-documented that he was already planning to run for Congress, had been discussing with fellow guardsmen for some time whether he would retire as part of his plans to run for Congress and in fact had already announced his run months before he retired. I don’t know the exact regulations. But I’m pretty sure National Guarding isn’t the kind of thing where you put in two weeks notice. There’s a fairly elaborate process for retirement. He officially retired in May 2005. I would imagine he had to start that process months before.
I’m not an expert on military service or retirement policies. The best summary I’ve seen of the whole story is this piece from Task & Purpose, a digital native publication that covers military issues from service to strategy.
I’m not surprised the Trump campaign is going there. I mean, they’re vicious degenerates and professional liars. But even more generally, campaigns put out lots of tendentious attacks. “Fair” isn’t part of the political campaign framework. But we should expect a lot better from the country’s leading dailies, especially charges directly from a campaign that contain so many red flags. Once a major paper picks up a hit and gives it credulous coverage it stops being a campaign attack and becomes a “story.” It’s a very specific kind of editorial decision. As I’ve explained in other posts, there’s been a growing push, especially at the Times but more generally, that Harris’s campaign momentum has been going on too long and needs to come to an end. Little question that fever played heavily into this editorial decision. And it’s not the first time. Let’s remember that the Times spent the better part of a year in 2015 and 2016 writing articles based on the hit book “Clinton Cash” which was funded by Steve Bannon. It’s a pattern.
I would be remiss if I didn’t note that the point of the spear in the Trump campaign effort here is of course JD Vance, himself a Marine Corps vet who did a sixth month stint in Iraq. I’m not normally one to scrutinize anyone’s military service. But as long as Vance is out there lying on the campaign’s behalf, accusing a 24 year vet of “stolen valor” and “lying” about his service, anyone would be remiss not to note that Vance himself never saw combat. He spent his six months in theater as essentially a reporter. He was a public affairs specialist who spent his time writing articles about how Marines spent their days on base. In other words, a sort of Sergeant Scribbles, if you will. Actually corporal, but it doesn’t flow off the pen as nicely. This was something Vance was admirably candid about in his memoir. Less so now, it would seem. Again, no shame in that. I wouldn’t have wanted to go into combat. But I wouldn’t attack a career soldier’s service either.