Quick Take: Bugout Tim

When duty called, Kamala Harris' running mate walked away

Governor Walz in Kuwait, 2022: What kept him?

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Kamala Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walsh, is a twenty-four-year veteran of Army National Guard. And except for the way it ended, I’d have nothing derogatory to say about his military career. My own was similar: twenty-eight years, nine active duty, eighteen as a drilling reservist in the Massachusetts Army National Guard and the Army Reserve.

At the time of Walz’s retirement in 2005, he was serving as Command Sergeant Major (E-9) of the First Battalion,125th Field Artillery Regiment, Minnesota Army National Guard: the senior enlisted advisor to the battalion commander. He held that rank provisionally, however, as he had not completed the required schooling to qualify for the highest noncommissioned officer rank in the Army. When he retired, therefore, it was in his permanent rank of Master Sergeant (E-8). Subsequently Walz has described himself as a retired sergeant major, which is not true. But that may be regarded as a quibble.

The same cannot be said about the timing and circumstances of his retirement. Walz retired from the Guard in May of 2005. Previously he had stated that his plans to run for Congress would not be affected by the possibility that his unit might be activated for deployment. Clearly, he knew at the time that such an alert would be coming soon.

In July 2005, the 1st Infantry Brigade Combat Team, 34th Infantry Division, of which the 1-125 FA was a component, was indeed alerted for deployment to Iraq. The brigade mobilized in September 2005 and deployed to Iraq in March 2006. Its deployment lasted twenty-two months.

Though Walz was within his rights to retire—assuming that no stop-loss order had been issued for the 1/34 IBCT—his decision to put personal ambition over his duty as his unit’s senior enlisted soldier was selfish and dishonorable. Noncommissioned officers, especially those in senior positions, are expected to maintain the standard and set the example. Walz, who held the highest enlisted position in his battalion, did the opposite. He bugged out. How he justified that decision to himself is not for me to say. But I know that I’d have been ashamed to do any such thing.

Every one of the soldiers of the 1-125 FA who did deploy to Iraq put his or her life on hold. Every one of them left jobs, school, family, and friends. That was the deal they struck with America when they put up their right hands to take the military oath of office or enlistment. And they stood by their word.

Tim Walz did not.