On the nose!

Trump has little advice to offer Naval Academy graduates

Dr. Daniel Barkhuff

In 1969, after having already been held hostage for four years, a
graduate of the United States Naval Academy faced a lonely choice in a
North Vietnamese prison camp: how to prevent his captors from using
him in a propaganda piece. James Stockdale chose to smash his own face
in with a stool rather than give “aid and comfort” to the enemy.

In the early years of Stockdale’s seven-year imprisonment, the current
president of the United States was enjoying the comforts of Wharton
Business School, having received four draft deferments to attend
college (he received another after graduation for supposedly having
bone spurs in his heels). He would later go on to make fun of POWs of
that era, claiming John McCain was not a war hero because he was
captured.

In 1972, a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy named John Ripley
low-crawled and pulled himself along the underside of the Dong Ha
bridge for over three hours, making multiple trips with explosives.
His actions, all done under fire from the North Vietnamese Army,
earned him the Navy Cross for valor. In 1972, Donald Trump, who took
over his father’s apartment rental business, was a year away from
being sued by the Justice Department for refusing to rent apartments
in one of his buildings to black people.

On Sept. 11, 2001, thousands of graduates of the U.S. Naval Academy
steeled themselves for a mission to bring violence to our enemies.
After the World Trade Center Towers fell, Donald Trump bragged on TV
that a building he owned was now the tallest in downtown Manhattan.

On Feb. 1, 2003, a graduate of the United States Naval Academy named
William McCool was at the helm of the space shuttle Columbia when it
broke up during reentry. The current president was then gearing up to
become the host of a reality TV show called “The Apprentice.”

In late June of 2005, two USNA graduates named Erik Kristensen and
Mike McGreevy insisted on being in the lead aircraft riding into a hot
landing zone in Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley to come to the aid of
their wounded, outnumbered and about to be overrun team of SEALs. The
helicopter was shot down, and they and more than a dozen others lost
their lives. A few months later in that same year, the current
president of the United States was captured in a recording bragging
about assaulting women: “I just start kissing them. It’s like a
magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let
you do it. You can do anything ... Grab ‘em by the [crotch]. You can
do anything.”

These are just a few of many examples of graduates of the U.S. Naval
Academy making big choices laden with courage and self-sacrifice that
come from a history of countless small choices: to be truthful, to
stay committed to a code of honor and duty, and to choose a harder
right over the easier wrong — even if the choice is contrary to their
own short-term personal interests. These are the choices that make one
fit to lead.

Contrast this to the personal and professional honor of the sitting
president of the United States, who time and again makes small choices
guided by self-interest, ego, impulse and immediate
self-gratification. He could never do what we ask our U.S. Naval
Academy graduates to do. He is a physical coward, a liar and no leader
at all.

It is right and fitting that the president of the United States give a
commencement address to a service academy’s graduating class. It is
also right and fitting that citizens of the democracy for which these
graduates will soon be charged with protecting point out the personal
cowardice, narcissism and incompetency of the current president.

Those of us who have served in this nation’s wars owe it to our new
graduates to point out how better served we would all be if in 2020
our small choices as citizens added up to one big choice — one that
will deliver us a leader whose personal choices and conduct are more
in keeping with the honorable traditions of our alma mater.

Dr. Daniel Barkhuff ) is president of
Veterans For Responsible Leadership, a 2001 U.S. Naval Academy
graduate and a former Navy SEAL. William Burke is the general counsel
for VFRL; he was also a 2001 graduate of USNA and served as a
submariner from 2001-2006.