After Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz brazenly inflated his combat service (he’s never deployed to a war zone), you would think that Vice President Kamala Harris might be more careful with America’s vets, particularly since she is campaigning to be the commander-in-chief.
But during Tuesday night’s debate at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, the vice president rolled out this falsehood: “As of today, there is not one member of the United States military who is in active duty in a combat zone, in any war zone around the world, the first time this century.”
How dare she. Every veteran should be infuriated by the vice president’s lie, particularly given it was a pre-planned soundbite to a question on her administration’s catastrophic Afghanistan withdrawal.
Perhaps America’s servicemen and women in combat zones are as invisible to Harris as the airmen at the steps of Air Force Two that she breezes by while intently using her headphones.
ABC’s moderators, David Muir and Linsey Davis, didn’t bother to fact check the Veep’s big whopper. Evidently, they were too busy calling the city manager of Springfield, Ohio about cats and dogs. But here are just a few facts about our service members in harm’s way:
Just two weeks ago, seven Americans were injured in an offensive attack against ISIS.
More than 10,000 American soldiers and sailors are serving in combat zones in the Middle East. Those troops aren’t just sitting around — they are actively fighting America’s enemies. As I write this, young, brave American sailors are engaged in the hottest naval action since World War II, duking it out with the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in the Red Sea. “It is every single day, every single watch, and some of our ships have been out here for seven-plus months doing that,” Capt. David Wroe told the Associated Press in June.
In January, three Americans were killed and 40 were injured in Jordan by another Iranian-backed militia group.
In April, the White House bragged how American sailors and soldiers in the Middle East shot down air attacks from Iran.
In May, three American service members were injured in the President’s hair-brained Gaza pier debacle. Perhaps Harris not consider the fighting between Israel and Palestinians in Gaza to constitute a war zone?
It is staggering to consider that the sitting vice president of the United States doesn’t know or care that thousands of American troops remain in a war zone. It is also shameful, given that these troops are coming under attack with weapons funded by the Biden-Harris policy of restoring billions of dollars to Iran that were frozen by former President Donald Trump.
It is blatant bias that ABC interrupted Trump five times to fact check the former president, but did not raise a word of objection to Harris as she lied about the military deployments in her own administration. She also went on to shamelessly misrepresent Trump’s position on abortion, Project 2025, his businesses and comments on the Charlottesville race riot. On each of these subjects, the ABC apparatchiks looked the other way.
Dismissing America’s troops actively engaged in combat zones pervades the entire Biden-Harris administration. It is a calculated omission, as evidenced by an email on Wednesday, the anniversary of 9-11. White House National Security Council communications adviser, John Kirby, was asked to comment on America’s retreat from Afghanistan.
This man whose job is to respond to the press replied: “Obviously no use in responding. A ‘handful’ of vets indeed and all of one stripe.”
Count me among that “handful” of angry vets — let’s hope others are paying attention.
Morgan Murphy is military thought leader, former press secretary to the Secretary of Defense and national security advisor in the U.S. Senate.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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