I’m a member of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, VFW for short. Generally it is a patriotic group of veterans. Predictably, rather conservative. But I had hopes they might make an exception. Today I got my answer to this query:” What’s been the VFW’s response to Trump’s abandonment of our most loyal allies in the Middle East, the Kurds, who now hold over 1,000 ISIS fighters for us, and who will soon be killed if we move out quickly? “ The answer, via email today is:’Bottom line, no official statement or position from VFW leadership at this time. ”
My response to them, the VFW brass, in part, is: The silence from the VFW troubles me. Commander Schmitz, is the VFW nuts, or just another group kowtowing to our deranged President Trump? Our VFW website says “No One Does More For Our Veterans.” I humbly submit that staying silent while our President hands our allies’ fate to Vladimir Putin and President Erdogan is not quite in line with our mission statement. Blind submission to a now possibly murderous tyrant, such as we now have in the White House, is not why your 1.6 million members signed up, I’ll wager.
Commander Schmitz, I believe it is past time for the VFW to speak up. If you don’t, we will be linked with another tyrant, Senator Joe McCarthy. It was he who was the target of the oft-quoted line, spoken by a beleaguered Mr. Welch in Senate testimony in the 1950s: Have You Left No Sense of Decency?” Is that us? Have we not the decency to speak up when warranted? The VFW’s silence in this matter amounts to an endorsement of Mr. Trump’s action against our most loyal allies.