Obama’s Contempt for Our Soldiers

by Warner Todd Huston | June 27, 2011 1:34 pm

Obama made what many are calling a mere “mistake” when he visited the 10th Mountain Division. His “mistake” came in when he said that a soldier that received the Medal of Honor was still alive.

Of course, the soldier in question, Sergeant First Class Jared Monti[1], was killed in Iraq in 2006 and did receive his Medal of Honor posthumously.

Here is what the president said:

“First time I saw 10th Mountain Division, you guys were in southern Iraq. When I went back to visit Afghanistan, you guys were the first ones there. I had the great honor of seeing some of you because a comrade of yours, Jared Monti, was the first person who I was able to award the Medal of Honor to who actually came back and wasn’t receiving it posthumously.”

Now, why do I say that this shows Obama’s contempt for the military? Because no one should make such a “mistake” as this. Obama and his team miserably failed to get the facts on this most important of facts.

In fact, the Medal of Honor is far more often bestowed upon soldiers who died in battle than it is to those that survived their heroic actions. Someone that knew even a tiny bit about the military would know this. The more common “mistake” would have been to assume that a soldier that won the honor was deceased when he was alive because of this fact. The default assumption by anyone with a little military knowledge would have assumed right off the top that the soldier in question was dead.

But Obama and his team have such little knowledge of the armed forces, our military traditions, and history that Obama somehow made the mistake that Sgt. Monti was still alive. This is because he simply has not touch with our military. He doesn’t care enough about it to have even a rudimentary knowledge of the armed forces.

Hence this incident shows his contempt for the military.