A Letter Regarding Arlington

Dear Senators and Congressmen,

Before anything else, please allow me to point out that this open letter will be announced with a concurrent press release sent to a list of recipients numbering well into four digits; while it could very well be a coincidence that the Vice President only addressed the incident regarding my father and 400,000 other veterans on X the following Saturday, the day after the last release regarding this matter was sent out, multiple journalists associated with multiple major national news outlets regularly read those releases and/or share them with their editors, per MailChimp. In other words, I’d advise you and/or your staff to read and respond. Apologies in advance for the length and thank you for reading.

On October 23rd, at 7:05 p.m. local time in Frankfurt, Germany, I will reach my own private Forrest Gump Point of three years, two months, 14 days and 16 hours.

That Wednesday evening next month, it will be exactly that long it will have been since I stepped aboard a plane departing Seattle for Frankfurt, the day after the last memorial service for my father, who died on August 26, 2019 from Agent Orange exposure in Vietnam. He was cremated before being inurned at Arlington National Cemetery in December 2020 (the ceremony on Whidbey Island, Washington, a place which was perhaps the closest thing to a home that my father ever had, was the third such event).

On August 26, 2024, exactly five years to the day after my father’s death, convicted felon Donald J. Trump, a Vietnam Era draft-dodger who can’t remember which foot contained “bone spurs,” dared to brazenly break laws on hallowed ground, giving an obscene thumbs-up above gravestones. While it will no doubt continue to be pointed out ad nauseam that the families pictured gave permission, there were innocent gravestones pictured, and, more broadly, a few families do not have the right to speak for 400,000 families. This is in addition to the fact that an ANC employee was physically assaulted.

Senator and Congressmen, with respect, I ask that you distinguished gentlemen get your respective pairs, stand up for former and current constituents on the floors of the Senate and House (my father moved to Houston in the 00s to be near the grandkids, before meeting the lady who would become my stepmother and moving with her to South Carolina) and demand a resolution in turn demanding that each and every person involved in this incident be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, fear be damned.

While the word is that at least one of you is quite a good lawyer, allow this citizen the liberty of writing the text of the Joint Resolution for you:

JOINT RESOLUTION

Authorizing the Attorney General of the United States of America to enforce the Rule of Law regarding the events at Arlington National Cemetery on August 26th last, and thus protect the dignity of those veterans who have protected all citizens of the United States.

Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America

in Congress assembled, That,

Donald J. Trump and all other individuals and organizations who openly defied well-documented legal prohibitions against photography and filmography on the hallowed grounds of Arlington National Cemetery, after aiding and abetting the physical assault of an ANC employee, should be immediately and criminally prosecuted to the full extent of the law, so as to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States of America, the embodiment of the American Rule of Law, from those who have never taken an oath of office as an Officer of the United States and who have therefore never sworn to support the said Constitution, and who continue to act accordingly.

Gentlemen, circling back to my Forrest Gump Point made earlier: Do this for dad and all other veterans who can no longer preserve, protect and defend themselves, much less anyone else, and I’ll board a plane in Frankfurt after October 23rd to fly back to Austin to vote for you who are running (yes, I still might try to vote absentee, but my 2022 effort from the same Sarajevo hotel ended in a technical mishmash that perhaps says more about our nation’s commitment to the voting rights of non-military expats than it does my commitment to practicing what I preach and participating in our beloved democracy).

And, finally, apologies for the at-times blunt tone of this note. Is it the karma that I believe still surrounds my birth city of Bad Kreuznach, Germany (site not only of some of the most horrific sieges of that most-horrific conflict, the Thirty Years’ War, but also headquarters through the ages of many illustrious military organizations, including the German Army High Command during WWI and my father’s unit, the American 8th Infantry Division, during the Cold War)? Is it the lingering heritage from Vietnam that informed my childhood (in addition to providing his son with many civics lessons that never seemed to have occurred to Fred Trump, Sr., my father once told me what the Viet Cong did to captured Americans)? Is it the fact that I grew up in Odessa, Texas? Most likely the latter, of course (this has been a bit of what Mrs. Fowler, our Government and Economics teacher at Permian, often referred to as West Texanese). Let’s move forward.