Let's get one thing straight right off the bat: No matter where the fighting is and no matter the cause, most soldiers will act bravely, sometimes even heroically, to support their fellow soldiers. In every bullshit war, there are men and women who fight, get wounded, and die, and their sacrifice should be honored and respected. They went to war because the leaders we elected made them go there.
But let's also get another thing straight: We have not fought a war that wasn't bullshit since World War II. And every death and every wound has been for nothing (beyond the soldiers protecting each other.) Korea was bullshit. Vietnam was bullshit. The Persian Gulf was bullshit. Iraq was bullshit. Afghanistan is bullshit. They are all built on lies. Sometimes we allow ourselves to believe they weren't lies. But each and every one was based on lies to advance some policy or ideology that no Americans should have had to die for.
Which gets us to White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, a retired Marine general. Yesterday, Kelly appeared at the White House press briefing to set the record straight or some fucking thing about President Trump's callous phone call to the widow of Sgt. La David Johnson, killed in Niger earlier in this month.
In doing so, Kelly took his career and any respectability he had, which he had already handed over to Trump when he agreed to work for him in the first place, and he allowed Trump to fuck it in the ass while he cheered Trump on.
You can read about the many ways in which Kelly lied about Congresswoman Frederica Wilson. You can get confused at Kelly's statement that Wilson "listened in" on a conversation that was on a fucking speakerphone in the car she was riding in and therefore she had no fucking choice but to listen in. You can roll your eyes at Kelly calling Donald Trump "brave" for reaching out to the family of a fallen soldier, as if Donald Trump has ever done anything braver than eat one too many Big Macs in a single sitting. You can even shake your head at Kelly's beyond ignorant invocation of the past when "Women were sacred, looked upon with great honor."
But I'm saying, "Oh, just fuck off" to John Kelly for a couple of reasons.
First, he should fuck off for talking about how Gold Star families (those who lost someone in battle) are no longer sacred because "I think that left in the convention over the summer." He is probably invoking the Khan family, who criticized Trump at the Democratic Convention, and not Patricia Smith, who lost her son in the Benghazi attack and called Hillary a murderer, more or less, at the Republican Convention.
And Kelly should fuck off because in the rest of his fucked-up appearance he completely politicized Gold Star families - who, it should be noted, often politicize themselves in honor of their lost loved ones. He ignored that the president didn't treat those families as sacred when he attacked the Khans. That didn't fucking crop up in his obsequious fluffing of Trump. As if to make his point clear about who he values, Kelly took a couple of questions but only from reporters who are in Gold Star families or are related to them.
Then he pretty much said that you're an asshole if you don't serve in the military: "We don't look down upon those of you who that haven't served. In fact, in a way we're a little bit sorry because you'll have never have experienced the wonderful joy you get in your heart when you do the kinds of things our service men and women do -- not for any other reason than they love this country. So just think of that."
To which one can only say, "Fuck off. There are so many ways to serve your country and your community that don't involve the military and how fucking dare you diminish those."
Even more, John Kelly can fuck off because of what I started with here. Kelly said he was so upset that Rep. Wilson said mean things about Donald Trump (by, you know, quoting Donald Trump) that he had to take a walk. So, as one does, he went to Arlington National Cemetery, and "I went over there for an hour-and-a-half, walked among the stones, some of whom I put there because they were doing what I told them to do when they were killed."
What were they doing under his orders? Fighting in a bullshit war in Iraq, where Kelly had various commands, up to being in charge of the whole damn show in 2008. Yeah, Kelly led men to die for nothing. And so many in the military know that they were it was a war for nothing. Oh, he could have retired, but he didn't. Which means he believed in the bullshit war and sent soldiers to die for bullshit. I'm pretty fucking sure they didn't sign up for that.
But let's go even further here because, you know, if you're gonna tell someone to "Fuck off," you may as well go all the way. One of Kelly's sons died in combat. He usually doesn't talk about it because it's horrific and personal and why should he. But Trump dragged the corpse of Kelly's son into this shitpool. And Kelly brought him up yesterday. Kelly's son died in Afghanistan in 2010 in a war that should never have been started and was fucked up from the start by President Bush and it wasn't even unfucked by President Obama. Like every other soldier in this war, he died for nothing because he shouldn't have been there in the first place. Kelly's younger son is now on his fifth tour of duty in Afghanistan.
Yeah, John Kelly walked out in front of the world yesterday to announce that he is just another piss whore in Trump's bed, and he'll willingly degrade himself and his family in order to stay there.
(Note: I support the troops so much that I don't want them to have to fight because some politician needs to prove that a think-tank's position on democracy or terrorism is correct. I want them to defend us and defend our allies. And, yes, I have family in the military. I don't want them to die for bullshit.)