Elon Musk is Right about Sen. Mark Kelly

Military service in one's youth should not shield an elected representative from criticism.

I was impressed by Elon Musk’s fine more moral sensibility in his recent interview with Fox News Brett Baier.

BAIER: Democratic Arizona Senator Mark Kelly posted on X about his trip to Ukraine to push for continuing to send US weapons and support there, and you posted that he was a traitor. Why do that?

MUSK: Well I think somebody should care about the interests of the Untied States above the interests of another country, and if they don't, they're a traitor.

BAIER: [Kelly] is a decorated veteran, a former astronaut, a sitting US senator."

MUSK: It doesn't mean it's ok for him to put the interests of another country above America.

MUSK: We should have empathy for the thousands of people dying everyday in the trenches. For no movement in the lines. For the past two years thousands of people have died every week for nothing. … I take great offense at those who put the appearance of goodness over the reality of it. Those who virtue signal and say we can't give into Russia, but have no solution to stopping thousands of kids dying every day. … I have contempt for such people and I want to make that clear. Because they're virtue signaling and their lack of a solution means that kids don't have a father. It means parents lost a son. For what? Nothing.

Baier’s remark that Kelly is a “decorated veteran” was a reference to Kelly’s service as a Naval aviator during the Gulf War. He flew 39 combat missions off the USS Midway carrier in an A-6E intruder attack aircraft, used primarily for dropping ordnance on enemy targets. He served as part of the coalition’s air campaign against the Iraqi army in which the U.S and it allies flew more than 116,000 combat air sorties and dropped 88,500 tons of bombs to destroy the Iraqi army in preparation for the ground campaign.

During the Gulf War, US forces experienced 147 battle deaths and lost 28 fixed wing aircraft. According to the Middle East Research and Information Project:

The US unofficially estimates the number of Iraqi soldiers killed as a direct consequence of the air and ground war in January and February 1991 to be 75,000 to 105,000. Senior US military officials have said that 60,000 to 80,000 Iraqis died in bunkers during the air assaults and an additional 15,000 to 25,000 were killed during the ground offensive.

I am sure that Senator Kelly was a fine Naval aviator who trained hard and was animated with patriotic spirit when he was a young pilot. However, as the above numbers reveal, it wasn’t an an evenly matched fight.

Military service in one’s youth is rightfully revered, but it should not shield an elected representative from criticism of his war policy thirty-four years later.

Throughout history it has been observed that old men holding political power have an unfortunate way of becoming detached from the suffering of the young men they send to their deaths.

In Kelly’s case, this age-old problem may have been accentuated by the fact that he killed an awful lot of ill-trained and poorly-equipped Iraqi conscripts without seeing many (if any) of his own guys killed.

It seems to me that Elon Musk’s remarks are spot on. Apart from more lucre for the beneficiaries of the Materiel Gravy Train, there is nothing to be gained by continuing the senseless war in Ukraine. The longer the inevitable negotiated settlement is delayed, the more people will needlessly die.

Click on the image below to watch the interview.