Military Families Speak Out are deeply appalled by President Trump’s recent remarks regarding the severe injuries suffered by US Service members as a result of Iran’s retaliatory strike that took place on January 8, 2020 at Al Asad Air Base in Iraq. During a press conference, President Trump downplayed the seriousness of the over 109 diagnosed cases of traumatic brain injuries suffered by our troops. Below is a letter from members of Military Families Speak Out demanding an apology from President Trump and Defense Secretary Mike Pompeo for their callous and offensive remarks: 

Open Letter to President Trump,  

Initially, you and the Pentagon reported that no US service members were injured or killed in the January 8th Iranian missile attack, which was in retaliation for the Jan 2 US drone strike that killed a top Iranian general. At an address after the attack you said: 

“No Americans were harmed in last night’s attack by the Iranian regime. We suffered no casualties. All of our soldiers are safe and only minimal damage was sustained at our military bases”. Later during the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, after the public learned that US service members had been diagnosed with Traumatic Brain Injuries, you were asked, “So you don’t consider potential traumatic brain injury serious?. You replied,” No, I do not consider that to be bad injuries, no” and referred to such injuries as “headaches”. 

Such callous remarks are deeply offensive and are evidence of your serious lack of education on this matter. As of today, we have not heard any admission from you, the Pentagon or Secretary of Defense, Mike Pompeo, that traumatic brain injuries are one of the signature wounds of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and often considered by medical professionals as a grave injury. As Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces your statements have left our troops, their families and loved ones feeling deeply hurt and betrayed. Our loved ones have been the victims of these unjust wars for almost 20 years. It also dealt a major setback to much of the efforts that many of us, including the VA Administration, have spent educating the public about the seriousness of Traumatic Brain Injury and other invisible wounds of war, such as PTSD, moral injury, death by suicide and military sexual trauma. 

As many military families know firsthand, Traumatic Brain Injury is serious and often causes permanent neurological damage. The effects of TBI on our returning troops may not be obvious to many, but we know how debilitating this injury can be and that it has destroyed many US Service member’s health to the degree that it has caused many of them to be unable to lead physically and emotionally functional lives. Military Families Speak Out and our troops expect better of you and the Department of Defense and want and deserve an apology. Such recognition of the injuries caused by these unjust wars will go a long way in helping our loved ones begin to heal from lifelong injuries sustained by our current wars of aggression and remind the public that it is long past the time for us to end these wars and bring all of our troops home. 

MFSO is horrified by President Trump’s comments about “taking the oil” in Iraq.

President Trump, January 2017, at the CIA: “The old expression, to the victor belong the spoils…we should’ve kept the oil…But, okay, maybe we’ll have another chance.”

This careless statement, which has not been retracted, endangers the lives of our troops in Iraq and the region.   ISIS has been losing ground in Iraq but this statement greatly assists ISIS’s ability to recruit, directly hurting the progress our troops have made in Iraq.
“There is nothing Trump could have said that would be more corrosive to our interests in the Middle East,” says Ryan Crocker, the distinguished former U.S. ambassador to Baghdad. And nothing that so displays the president’s ignorance of Middle East history and dynamics.

This talk of seizing oil is a clarion call to anti-U.S. forces,” Crocker told me, “because it plays to the myth that we were in Iraq to take their oil. Oil is the sacred touchstone of Iraqi sovereignty and independence. From 2003 all the way to Donald Trump we made clear that we understood that.
“Now Iraqis will believe that seizing oil is U.S. policy. Trump has made the myth come true.”

We strongly object to President Trump’s comments.  Taking the oil is against international law and a war crime. These unthinking words also damage our standing in the world.  We suggest that MFSO members write a letter to the editor or contact their Congressional members to demand that President Trump retract these comments which endanger our troops in Iraq as well as our troops stationed in the region.

References:
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/02/additional-troops-afghanistan-john-nicholson-234844
http://www.philly.com/philly/columnists/trudy_rubin/20170127_Worldview__Trump_s_lust_for_Iraq_s_oil_endangers_American_soldiers.html