He retired. After he retired he ran for Congress and had a platform. If he left the army as a protest and to fight it in Congress I’ll gladly say you were right.
There is a sequence to these things. I’ve been through it several times. They received a warning order that a deployment was coming prior to his retirement. Further orders raising the level of alert and defining their possible mission came later. Since the Guard is also a state asset there are procedures removing units from state service and transferring them to active duty. Except in extreme circumstances the process takes time. Sometimes within the process the mission changes completely. We were due to do that cake Italy mission Walz did go on. Looking at the timing we would have done it soon after they did. Our mission changed at the last minute for the worse. But our warning order came down months before.
I really don’t get it? He had a job related injury–hearing loss, which has to be a big deal in the military (Fire! Can you repeat that?) He has support from his fellows. He went on to continue to serve the country. Why is this an issue?
I guess I wonder why the hearing loss isn’t a mitigating factor for @Loach. I don’t think you get your stapes replaced lightly. That is specialized, finicky surgery and means that hearing aids weren’t cutting it.
Not sure how far back it was, but @Loach did explain why it was an issue to him. I read it and it made sense, but it means very little to me. I was 4 years Navy and out. I’ll look for the post.
Fox News: “Pay no attention to the fact that our preferred presidential candidate is Putin’s lapdog and would let Putin overrun Ukraine while jeopardizing our own national security. What you need to know is that their VP candidate once visited China!”
it looks like 2005 was a bit of a pivotal year in the walz household. the hearing loss, surgery, looking at running for office, and rounds of ivf to have a child in 2006.
he was 41 and looking at some serious life altering decisions.
Ok? He said he left to run for congress. You don’t have to leave the military to run for congress. Jeff Jackson is in the Army Reserves and he’s in Congress. I’m not sure what that’s supposed to mean.
I have not seen anything to indicate he retired for medical reasons. There is a process for that which makes much more sense than retiring for non-medical reasons especially if that hearing loss was service connected. It would be extremely clear in his records if he was retired medically.
Unless you can cite these, then at the moment all you are doing is smearing a fellow veteran by claiming he abandoned those under his command. It’s gross.
The undisputed fact is that the dude retired 10 months before his unit deployed. 10 months. He didn’t abandon anyone.
a) Walz’s May 2005 retirement itself required paperwork submitted several months earlier, according to the aired CNN report. I will look for a transcript, as I don’t see it mentioned in the online article I linked.
b) That warning order … there’s a paper trail, I assume? Can we count on a conservative news source soon uncovering that warning order to Walz’s unit?
OK–you can be a Congressman and a reservist, but not a Congressman and a deployed reservist. So you could argue that it is Jackson that is irresponsible, since were he to be deployed he would have to quit one of the 2 jobs.
Although orders such as those aren’t classified they aren’t generally found on the internet. Some from his unit say that they received the Warning Order in early 2005. That jibes with my experience of the WARNO coming 6 months ahead of the alert. Which would put it in February. I remember that time well because I kept it from my kids until the alert came in. Stressful time. It’s possible that the timing of some of the reports are wrong. They do sound right to someone who went through the process multiple times.
Is that even super relevant to a discussion of “cowardice”, though? I mean, regardless of how much warning he had about the plans for his specific unit, he obviously knew there was a nonzero chance of him being deployed to a combat zone.
That’s not true although I don’t believe it’s happened recently. Charles Bennett served in WWII while in Congress. I believe there were others that I can’t remember right now. Beau Biden was in Iraq while I was there and he continued to be the Attorney General of Delaware. It’s not common but there certainly isn’t a law against it.
I’m curious in reading this–it sounds like there’s a lot we don’t know, including the motivations of the soldiers who are impugning him. What would it look like to give him the benefit of the doubt, here–and is it worth doing so?
FWIW, Googling [Tim Walz, National Guard, unit, “warning order”] yields nothing but conservative news sources – and whatever stance the tabloid Daily Mail holds.
All these articles invariably say that the warning order was relayed in “early 2005”. Was that like early January? Late April? What?
We need both more detailed info, and a higher class of source.
And Left_Hand_of_Dorkness’s point is taken, as well.
