True or not, The Atlantic's Belleau Wood "suckers-losers" Trump statement — is going to make the President bleed

© 2020 Peter Free

 

05 September 2020

 

 

The Atlantic's anti-Trump essay — truth or clever propaganda?

 

A political nuke just exploded:

 

 

In a conversation with senior staff members on the morning of the [2018] scheduled visit [to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery in France] Trump said, “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers.”

 

In a separate conversation on the same trip, Trump referred to the more than 1,800 marines who lost their lives at Belleau Wood as “suckers” for getting killed.

 

© 2020 Jeffrey Goldberg, Trump: Americans Who Died in War Are ‘Losers’ and ‘Suckers’, Atlantic (03 September 2020)

 

 

The manipulative "beauty" of this hit piece . . .

 

. . . is that it sounds exactly like something President Trump would say.

 

Under precisely those circumstances.

 

And even despite the fact that author Goldberg's sources are not identified.

 

 

Can't be swept under the rug, either — because . . .

 

Belleau Wood's memory and cemetery ground epitomize Marine Corps courage and determination.

 

Even as a kid in the 1950s, I knew Belleau Wood by name and what it represented. In those days, these emblematic battles were still part of the American martial fabric. Admittedly perhaps more so, for those of us who grew up south of the Mason-Dixon line.

 

Ax-trashing this memory of honor and its associated call to duty and courage — as the President reportedly did two years ago — is like pissing on the corpses of those dead Marines and the Corps they gave their lives to.

 

 

I do not exaggerate

 

If you want perspective and a taste of the humanly sacred — whether in tribute to high-priced human foolishness, worth or courage — walk some Europe's many World War I and II cemeteries.

 

For instance — and easily accessed from military bases in southern Germany:

 

 

here — Luxembourg American Cemetery and Memorial (World War II)

 

here — Sandweiler (Luxembourg) German War Cemetery (World War II)

 

here — Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery and Memorial (First World War)

 

 

You will not come away, the same person who entered.

 

 

The moral? — Clever hit piece or truth — it doesn't matter

 

President Trump's essentially cowardly and unprincipled nature — as well as his perennially dishonorable and dishonoring mouth — have come back to assail him.

 

It is fitting, in Honor's lexicon, that dead Marines have delivered this most symbolically telling of ass-bites.