Why Tim Walz Left the Army

Tim Walz is the only retired service member to ever run for president in either major party, and yet the Trump camp and partisan braggarts are trying to turn that into a negative. After serving the country for 24 years as a member of the National Guard, Walz abandoned his unit by retiring just as it was facing the war in Iraq, or so the argument goes. So he is accused of having ‘slipped out the door’.

Tim Walz is one of the few ten percent of enlisted soldiers in the U.S. Army who serve until retirement. His 24 years of service is exceptionally long compared to his military colleagues, nearly 30 percent of whom don’t make it past 3 years. He did what many choose not to do, or cannot do. But unlike his long service, Walz’s experience in the military was in many ways remarkably ordinary.

The most obvious is Walz’s decision to serve as a recruit, the non-officer corps that makes up more than 80 percent of all conscripts and is the military’s basic force. path of choice for the working class who do not have a college degree. Less obvious, however, is how typical his choices were in the run-up to the Iraq War. Consider, for example, his decision to postpone his retirement and re-enlist after 9/11. This placed Walz among the more than 180,000 Other Americans who signed up after 9/11 were moved to action by a sense of patriotism. In retrospect, that may seem naïve, but the patriotic fervor in the immediate aftermath of the attack was palpable even to the apolitical seventh-grade version of me. Walz could have retired peacefully after 20 years (though Republicans would probably criticize him for that, too, even if his gunnery skills weren’t needed in 2001.)

Also common was Walz’s disillusionment with the second Gulf War that followed the fighting in Afghanistan. Walz’s public criticism of the war began, as far as I can tell, in 2006, the same year that a clear and consistent majority of Americans began opposing the war.

During his campaign for Congress that year, Walz delivered what NPR then said called “an authoritative critique of the war” that became “a central plank of his campaign.” The local NPR affiliate called he called the war in Iraq his “biggest problem,” citing his call for “an exit strategy for the country’s troops.” pushed The Democratic Party leadership will use “Congress’ power over the money spigot” to withdraw from the war.

Although Walz retired the year before his 2006 campaign, he didn’t face the criticism he does now. It’s easy to see why: the war was an active political controversy at the time, and a burden for Republican incumbents. No one would have been surprised if someone eligible for retirement were to retire because they didn’t support the Bush-Cheney disaster. But now that the Iraq War began 20 years ago, people seem to have forgotten what it was like then.

If there is one aspect of Walz’s service that deserves criticism, it is his reluctance thus far to explain his decision to end his time in the military. The military is not a mafia; you don’t take a blood oath until the day you die. Under our volunteer military system, your oath lasts until your next contract (if you renew) and then essentially expires when you are eligible to retire (which is 20 years for a draftee). There are many reasons why people decide to retire — health, family, money, getting tired of the military, educational choices, job opportunities, disagreements with policy, moral opposition to war. Ask anyone who has served; cowardice rarely comes up. But Walz has remained silent about his decision to retire, and it is astonishing.

Without telling the story of his retirement, his opponents can fill the void with their own. And that’s exactly what’s happening. Walz’s reticence on this issue clashes with the Minnesotan’s kind of down-to-earth, unsuspecting Midwestern everyman. Whether he has the candor to address it will be an interesting test of his willingness to stand up to the national security chiefs in Washington who, I’m sure, are advising him that, sir, if you say you retired because the war was stupid, people might think you’re a pinko.

A retired soldier I know (who himself enlisted because of 9/11) once told me about a particularly harrowing firefight he was in while deployed to Afghanistan. We told each other things we wouldn’t tell most people. So I asked him if he was scared, knowing he would answer honestly. He laughed and said, “Yes, I was scared!” The comment didn’t diminish his courage; it made it clear how serious the situation must have been. And most of all, I respected his honesty.

If Walz chooses to tell his personal story rather than his political story, that will be the measure of a human being rather than a politician.

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