Donald Trump and the meaning of sacrifice

Almost a year ago, a group of journalists were in the dining hall at a military camp in Florida when Donald Trump appeared on the television set that was turned to Fox News.

One of the soldiers with us was asked about the possibility of President Trump.

Keep in mind this was a year ago, just as the Trump train was leaving the station on this improbable political journey. One of the soldiers cracked a joke. He then said something like, “With‘Trump’ across the front of the uniforms, that will be nice.”

It brought laughs.

Today, it’s not funny. The reason? The potential impact on that same military, the very machine that defends our freedom. There has been a pattern over the last year of not understanding those who serve.

It started last July when Trump criticized Republican Sen. John McCain, a Vietnam veteran and prisoner of war.

“He’s not a war hero,” said Trump. “He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”

I don’t care what you think of Sen. McCain’s politics — that statement is unacceptable.

Now, wearing the mantle of the Republican Party, it seems Mr. Trump continues to double down when it comes to the military. And it makes no sense for someone who wants to become the commander in chief of that very military.

Believe me.

Trump continues to lob attacks at Ghazala and Khizr Khan, the parents of an Army captain killed in Iraq in 2004. Khizr Khan, some would argue, started the fight when he gave an impassioned speech at the Democratic National Convention last month. I have heard some argue that Mr. Khan should not have politicized his son’s sacrifice.

Mr. Khan’s remarks can be boiled down to one sentence aimed at the Republican nominee: “You have sacrificed nothing and no one.”

Mr. Trump’s answer: he sacrificed to create jobs through his real estate empire. This definition of sacrifice from dictionary.com seems to fit the situation: “the surrender or destruction of something prized or desirable for the sake of something considered as having a higher or more pressing claim.”

You judge who has sacrificed the most for this country, Mr. and Mrs. Khan, Muslim immigrants who’s son, an American soldier was killed saving fellow soldiers, or Mr. Trump, a billionaire developer who received multiple deferments to stay out of the Vietnam conflict.

The answer is clear, at least in my mind.

Don’t read this as an endorsement of the Democratic side of this presidential choice. It isn’t, and if you want to press on that point, you can go to the Muscogee County Elections Office and find that I pulled a Republican ballot in the March primary — and it wasn’t a protest vote.

At the end of the day, at least for me, it comes down to sacrifice and the very meaning of the word. If I had one decision in my life to do over, I would go back to my early adulthood and seriously consider the military. That training and structure would have made me a better person.

And it would have given me a better understanding of the meaning of sacrifice.

This story was originally published August 3, 2016 at 6:57 PM with the headline "Donald Trump and the meaning of sacrifice."