Political Ethics
Peter O’Rourke: Tim Walz prioritized personal ambition over military duty
Peter O’Rourke, former Acting Secretary of Veteran Affairs, reacts to the news that Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz declined to deploy to Iraq for combat duty as a high-ranking member of the Minnesota National Guard. “When you’re in a guard unit and you get called up by your nation to deploy and to serve in a combat zone, that’s the pinnacle of your service especially in a guard unit. And to see your senior enlisted guy decide that his personal ambition was much more important than that unit’s ambition, that had to have been a blow to their morale," he says.