I respect all military members. No matter what their job was/is in the military, they all serve important functions.
But Vance himself was a journalist in the military, not a combat soldier, as he states in this excerpt from his HIllbilly Elegy book:
From HILLBILLY ELEGY by J.D. Vance Copyright © 2016 by J.D. Vance. Reprinted courtesy of Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
My final two years in the Marines flew by and were largely uneventful, though two incidents stand out, each of which speaks to the way the Marine Corps changed my perspective. The first was a moment in time in Iraq, where I was lucky to escape any real fighting but which affected me deeply nonetheless. As a public affairs marine, I would attach to different units to get a sense of their daily routine. Sometimes I’d escort civilian press, but generally I’d take photos or write short stories about individual marines or their work. Early in my deployment, I attached to a civil affairs unit to do community outreach. Civil affairs missions were typically considered more dangerous, as a small number of marines would venture into unprotected Iraqi territory to meet with locals. On our particular mission, senior marines met with local school officials while the rest of us provided security or hung out with the schoolkids, playing soccer and passing out candy and school supplies. One very shy boy approached me and held out his hand. When I gave him a small eraser, his face briefly lit up with joy before he ran away to his family, holding his two-cent prize aloft in triumph. I have never seen such excitement on a child’s face.
https://www.military.com/undertheradar/2016/09/j-d-vance-learned-marine-corps
And this from USA Today:
In his 2016 memoir Hillbilly Elegy, as excerpted by Military.com, Vance described the press as “the holy grail of the Marine Corps public affairs: the biggest audience and the highest stakes.”
For the last nine months of his service, Vance was the media relations officer for the Marine Corps Air Station in Cherry Point, North Carolina, one of the largest military bases on the East Coast. ...
Vance was deployed to Iraq for six months in late 2005. Based on his memoir, he would “attach to different units to get a sense of their daily routine,” escort civilian press, and write stories about individual marines.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/07/16/was-jd-vance-marine-military/74411600007/
So STFU about Tim Walz's decades of service in the military, JD.
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