SURPRISE: Trump Stumbles Through Holiday Visit to Troops in Iraq

So on Wednesday, I hit President Trump for his pathetic bone spurs excuse to get out of serving in Vietnam.

A story out of The New York Times highlighted the account of daughters of a former podiatrist out of Jamaica, Queens, who obliged Trump’s father, Fred Trump, by writing up a phony diagnosis of bone spurs for young Donnie, after he’d exhausted his education deferments.

It was apparently a common ailment among the pampered progeny of the wealthy and powerful, back then.

I closed out my piece with this:

Is it any wonder that in his two years as president, he has yet to visit our military men and women stationed overseas during the holidays?

Folks, I’m not the type to hide from anything when I’ve been proven wrong.

After I posted that column, the news broke that President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump had secretly whisked away on Air Force 1 to visit troops stationed at Al Asad Air Base, in Iraq.

Good for him.

As some pointed out, a bit of shaming did wonders.

I don’t know if it was the shaming, or not. Maybe he’d had these plans for some time. I imagine it takes a bit to arrange for a trip of this nature, combined with keeping it secret, arranging for appropriate security, and all the necessary procedures.

So this marks the first visit for Trump to our troops stationed abroad. He followed up the Iraq trip with a visit to troops stationed in Germany, then, back home to the States.

Of course, President Trump’s most loyal and obedient MAGA followers would have us believe that he parachuted down behind enemy lines and rescued an entire American platoon, while there.

With nothing but his tiny, bare hands, and the force of his MAGA will, ISIS was reduced to a pile of ash. The cowering troops lifted Trump on their shoulders and carried him back to the base, cheering all the way.

Ok. That’s only a slight exaggeration.

The facts are, the troops seemed glad to [finally] see their commander-in-chief.

Also fact: It was every bit the embarrassing mess that we’ve come to expect from anything Donald J. Trump touches.

In his efforts to make it all about himself, there were several missteps and a few outright lies.

And yes, I know this is where those who either defend Trump as an act of worship, or who feel compelled to defend him, out of a lingering fear of being called a “liberal” or a “Hillary supporter” will step in and whine that I never have anything good to say about Trump.

Hey, I gave him kudos for making the trip, but I think it’s just dishonest to treat this as anything other than what it was: propaganda for the Trump regime.

Believe me, he kept it as brief as possible, got the shots for the cringe-worthy montage video that he’ll play for the next two years at campaign rallies, as proof of his combat cred, and then he got out of there.

So among those things he did wrong: He lied about pay raises for our military.

With Trump, no matter what the facts say, he has to pump himself as the first, the greatest, the most impressive of all things.

He claimed that our military had not had a raise in ten years, until he became president, and then, by his grace, they received a ten percent pay raise.

That was a lie.

Sadly, this wasn’t a mistake or a misspeak on his part. Trump lies because he is a liar, by nature, and his faithful acolytes reward him for it. They celebrate his lies, excuse them, and even swallow his lies in acceptance.

Because that’s what cults do.

Speaking to troops at Al Asad Air Base during his surprise visit to Iraq, Trump told troops: “You protect us. We are always going to protect you. And you just saw that, ’cause you just got one of the biggest pay raises you’ve ever received. … You haven’t gotten one in more than 10 years. More than 10 years. And we got you a big one. I got you a big one. I got you a big one.”

“They had plenty of people that came up, they said, ‘You know, we could make it smaller. We could make it 3%, we could make it 2%, we could make it 4%,'” Trump told the troops about the latest pay raise. “I said, ‘No. Make it 10%. Make it more than 10%.'”

‘Cause it’s been a long time, it’s been more than 10 years. Been more than 10 years, that’s a long time,” Trump said, repeating the false claim.

It’s always about him and what he did, isn’t it? He’s always looking to make himself the hero of heroes.

So here’s the truth: Our military has received pay raises every year for more than the last three decades.

They haven’t always been massive, or what our troops deserve, but they’ve been there.

During Trump’s short time in office, they got a 2.4 percent increase in 2018, and the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act has allowed for a 2.6 percent increase, which will be the largest in the past nine years.

So that makes a 5 percent increase under President Trump. Still only half of the 10 percent he’s lying about boasting.

I guess he really needs them to focus on how great he is to them, and to forget about how he has rejected the counsel of true warriors, like General James Mattis, when it comes to the use of our troops abroad.

Next, in his need for self-promotion, it appears the president may have given away the identity of a secret Navy SEAL team, stationed in Iraq, with that goofy promo video he posted to Twitter.

.@FLOTUS Melania and I were honored to visit our incredible troops at Al Asad Air Base in Iraq. GOD BLESS THE U.S.A.! pic.twitter.com/rDlhITDvm1

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 26, 2018

It wasn’t so much the video (a montage of Trump photo ops, with Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA” playing in the background). It was the fact that the faces of the team members were not blurred or obscured, in any way.

Wouldn’t that pose some sort of security risk, given their mission and why they’re there?

Malcolm Nance, a former US Navy intelligence specialist, told Newsweek posting the video ran against traditional procedures that are meant to protect the identities of US special-operation forces in a combat zone.

“Operational security is the most important aspect of personnel deployments. The real names, faces, and identities, of personnel involved in special operations or activities, are usually a closely held secret in a combat zone,” Nance said.

“Revealing them casually, through an unusual media exposure even if it’s the commander in chief, would prove a propaganda boom if any of this personnel are detained by a hostile government or captured by a terrorist group. There would be no denying who you are and what you do.”

Yeah. So there’s that.

We can’t blame the service members who posed for the pictures. They had no idea that it would be used for Trump’s campaign logs.

Then, of course, was the usual Trump blather, which made the visit a highly politicized event. He can’t help himself.

“We’re no longer the suckers, folks,” Trump told service members in Iraq, where American forces have been fighting on and off since 1990. “We’re respected again as a nation.”

“If we see something happening with ISIS that we don’t like, we can hit them so fast and so hard they really won’t know what the hell happened,” the president continued, according to the Associated Press. “The nations of the region must step up and take more responsibility for their future,” said Trump, who added there would be a “strong, deliberate and orderly withdrawal” of U.S. forces from Syria.

That was kind of the point being made by Mattis, as well as the point man in Syria, Brett McGurk, both of who resigned in protest of Trump’s ill-advised announcement to withdraw from Syria, and allow for ISIS to regroup.

Stay the course until there is no chance of ISIS quickly reforming and regaining power.

“It’s time for us to start using our head,” he said, according to Bloomberg’s Jennifer Epstein, one of three wire reporters traveling with the president. “We don’t want to be taken advantage of anymore by countries that use us.”

Trump is a petulant punk, who knows nothing about alliances or strategy.  His ego won’t allow him to take advice, even if it makes all the gains and hard work of our troops in vain.

So he made a visit to the troops in Iraq and Germany. He took a few pictures, and told a lot of lies.

This does not make for a great commander-in-chief.

But for Trump, it’s the most we can expect.