The Vanity of Service

Dear Friends and Family,

Was my service in vain?

On one hand you say, “Thank you for your service and sacrifice.”

And on the other, you support to a man who is destroying the very thing I served and sacrificed for.

This is not an attack on your character. I respect your intellect and even share many of your values. I absolutely respect your right to support whomever you choose. Indeed, I respect your duty to support the person who best exemplifies your values.

But will you try to see things from my perspective?

When you thank me for my service, then support a man who is using the office of the president to evade justice, who recklessly withholds and distorts information — killing hundreds of thousands in the process, who selectively applies the rule of law when it is politically convenient and who ignores the rule of law when it is not, who undermines the very institutions, which, as the nation’s chief executive, are his constitutional duty to protect, it feels like you are saying that your personal values trump the values on which our constitution, and indeed, our very freedom, depend. The values that millions of my brothers and sisters-in-arms served and sacrificed for.

Values like equality of every citizen under the law, and not just the well-born. Values like the right of Americans to know the truth so that they are free to decide how best to act under the law. Values like insisting our leaders uphold the oath of the office to which they have been elected, by preserving, protecting and defending the Constitution — and not tearing it apart when it no longer suits them.

Because these are the values I served and sacrificed for.