Trump has served vets well in dangerous job

Mike Terry’s letter, “Baffled that fellow veterans back Trump,” (Jan. 31), exasperatedly wondering how any fellow military vet can support President Trump is compassionately intended. Unfortunately, it fails to even remotely address the single most compelling issue bestowing Trump with vast support among us: Veterans Affairs. Trump has proven more provident to us than any previous president, including General Eisenhower in the 1950s.

However, a more salient reason I object is the tangential insult that Trump was a coward avoiding the Vietnam era draft, via allegedly bogus medical deferment. Four of Trump’s 44 predecessors were murdered by gunfire and three others (Taylor, Harding and FDR) died under what some considered suspicious circumstances. In my lifetime four of 12 presidents — Truman, JFK (fatally), Ford (twice) and Reagan (critically wounded) — were shot at. Including candidates Robert Kennedy (killed) and George Wallace (paralyzed), it is a casualty percentage equivalent to a bloodied infantry platoon.

I despised Bill Clinton for (as he later confessed) employing illegal means to circumvent the draft that expropriated millions of us. But had Commander in Chief Clinton, who wagered his life for us every single day, entered any room I was in, I would have been the first man on my feet at attention. I submit anti-Trump vets would honor America by embracing that spirit. Martin Crane New London