I am voting for Joe Biden because I believe America is at a tipping point in history, and that he will set a course for our future as a free, law-abiding nation that invites people from all nations to lawfully come to America where they can compete fairly, be it in the military, business, sports, academia, and most assuredly politics.
Over the course of nearly 30 years of public service, I devoted my energies to protecting and enhancing our nation’s security. When I had the honor of serving as secretary of Defense, I saw on a daily basis the best and brightest that our nation has to offer – young men and women who were proud, patriotic, selfless, action-oriented and willing to take a bullet or a bomb to defend the American people.
Duty, Honor, Country are not mere catchwords to those who serve us in uniform, but the values they hold at the very center of their beings.
During Donald Trump’s campaign for the presidency in 2016, I concluded that he was unfit to serve as our commander in chief.
Trump‘s character was on full display when: he maligned Sen. John McCain as a non-hero because he was shot down and captured by the North Vietnamese; mocked the disability of a member of the national press corps; dismissed the pain of a Gold Star family; and hid his tax returns and sources of his purported wealth. In each of his actions, he communicated very clearly the “values” that have guided his life and those he would bring to the Oval Office
More from Opinion
Still, it came as a shock when on his first visit to the “tank,” the secure meeting room at the Pentagon where the members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff meet, President Trump lashed out at our military leaders calling them a bunch of “dopes” and “babies.”
Later, he claimed that one of our most decorated combat veterans, Gen. James Mattis, the person he chose to be his secretary of Defense was “vastly over-rated.” And while standing over the gravesite of Gen. John Kelly’s son at Arlington National Cemetery, he reportedly asked, “What was in it for them?
The world took notice of Trump’s slavish adoration of Russia’s Vladimir Putin while in Helsinki when he believed, contrary to the assessment of our entire intelligence community, that Putin did not interfere in the 2016 election.
Similarly, he accepted North Korea Kim Jong Un’s denial of responsibility for sending young Otto Frederick Warmbier, who had been imprisoned as a “subversive,” back to America in a vegetative state.
At the very core of Joe’s being is a visible sense of decency, a genuine humility and a deep-seated empathy for the pain of others.
The list of Trump’s dereliction of his duties is long, but the one that continues to pose a grave threat to our national security is his failure to develop and implement a national strategy to control the spread of COVID-19, the invisible enemy that to date has killed 225,000 of our citizens.
No arguments, no appeals to reason, no accusations, no negative portrayals will change Donald Trump. He has removed all doubt about his character and competence. He is who he is.
Joe Biden, by contrast, is the exact opposite. At the very core of Joe’s being is a visible sense of decency, a genuine humility and a deep-seated empathy for the pain of others.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE OPINION NEWSLETTER
I don’t know everything Joe Biden will do if he is elected next Tuesday, but I do know what he will never do as commander in chief:
- divert appropriated military funds to build a wall on our Southern border;
- deploy federal agents to shoot rubber bullets into the heads of protesters and spray them in the face with mace or tear gas;
- refuse to demand that Vladimir Putin stop putting bounties on the heads of our soldiers in Afghanistan;
- place our troops in jeopardy by making an impulsive decision to allow the Kurds to carry on the fight in Syria alone;
- encourage right wing militia groups to “stand back and stand by” in preparation for post-election violence;
- suggest that our NATO allies will receive military assistance depending on their payment of “dues”;
- engage in tabloid tweet storms that confuse our allies and entertain our adversaries;
- declare Black people protesting for equal justice “thugs” and domestic “terrorists”;
- ridicule members of the press hit with rubber bullets fired by federal agents as a “beautiful thing to watch”;
- deliberately separate children from their parents in an effort to deter those seeking entry or asylum in our country.
I’m voting for Joe Biden because we are sailing in the most turbulent and dangerous waters of our lives. We need a steady, stable, responsible leader who has steered our country through difficult storms in the past. We have a far better chance to become “America as it was always meant to be” if Joe Biden is at the helm.