Mr. President, go visit our troops
Thank them for their service face-to-face
It was New Year’s Day 1993 in Somalia, and the 41st president of the United States looked exhausted in the equatorial heat settling over a former Soviet air base occupied by U.S. Marines.
George H.W. Bush was 68 years old and a lame-duck president weeks from leaving office. One of his last decisions was sending troops to Somalia for famine-relief security. Now he wanted to thank them, and had flown in by Black Hawk helicopter from a Navy amphibious assault ship off the African shore.
It must have been a tiring trip from Washington because Bush appeared drawn and weary. Still, he stood for almost two hours in the sun posing with any Marine or soldier who wanted a photo. I was a reporter embedded with the troops, absorbed in watching 200 take their turn one by one — a sea of shaved heads and grinning faces surrounding Bush.
“It was like seeing a rock star,” one
22-year-old corporal told me. Troops serving in combat speak of a shared, nagging sense that apart from family and friends, most Americans back home seem oblivious or have forgotten that U.S. military members are still risking their lives overseas.
It’s a lament that melts away for a moment when the commander in chief comes calling. It’s why President Trump needs to go see the troops, something he hasn’t yet done.
President George W. Bush met with ground troops in Baghdad within
10 months of initiating that war in
2003. He would make four trips to Iraq and two to Afghanistan. When I covered those conflicts, an Air Force crew flying casualties in Afghanistan regaled me about Bush coming on board. They would never forget how the 43rd president stretched out on the aircraft’s metal floor to speak face-to-face with a wounded servicemember on a bottom bunk.
President Obama visited troops in Iraq as a senator in 2008 and as president within three months of taking office in 2009. He would go to Afghani- stan four times. During a surprise trip in 2014, after addressing a crowd of servicemembers, Obama made a point of shaking hands with all.
There’s little political payoff in these trips. News coverage is scant. Most Americans back home are asleep during the visit. And it’s not a time or place for major policy speeches or rallying oratory. It’s also a long way to travel with living conditions far less accommodating than the White House or a luxury Florida resort like Trump’s Mar-a-Lago.
And the visits are not without risk. After Defense Secretary James Mattis flew to Afghanistan last September, the Kabul airport came under an intense rocket attack by militants.
Trump has cast himself as an advocate for troops and veterans, though not without controversy. When he criticized NFL players for kneeling during the national anthem, he characterized the gesture as disparaging those “fighting for our country,” even though the players said their actions were about systemic racism and law enforcement behavior.
As a candidate, millions of dollars he raised in a veterans fundraiser were paid out to charities months later only after questions about the money were raised by The Washington Post.
And last fall, Trump (falsely) suggested that unlike previous presidents, he makes a practice of calling the families of troops killed in combat.
It’s hard to see a war zone visit as anything other than a gesture of genuine concern. Some 15,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan and 6,000 in Iraq and Syria carry out Trump’s policies.
“We can’t comment at this time when the president might travel there,” White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders responded to a query about Trump’s intentions. She noted Vice President Pence was asked to go to Afghanistan late last month. Trump himself addressed deployed servicemembers over Thanksgiving by video message from Mar-a-Lago.
That’s nice. But it’s not the same. He needs to go see them.
Gregg Zoroya is a USA TODAY editorial writer and author of The Chosen Few: A Company of Paratroopers and Its Heroic Struggle to Survive in the Mountains of Afghanistan.