Walz Abandoned His Guard Soldiers When They Needed Him Most

Bill Osmulski got married in August 2013. He and his Wisconsin National Guard unit were deployed to Kuwait just six months later. 

The War on Terror veteran served two years and two tours of duty in the Middle East, including in Iraq. As a soldier in the administrative wing — at points teaching Iraqi soldiers how to write press releases and use social media  — the work wasn’t dangerous. But the deployments for a newlywed were anything but convenient. 

“For the first three years of my marriage, I was deployed for two of them,” Osmulski, content director at the Madison-based MacIver Institute, told The Federalist Thursday during a phone interview. “Yes, there’s always a reason not to go.” 

Lots of reasons. But Osmulski and his comrades put their lives on hold when their country called.  

Walz Chooses Politics Over His Battalion 

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz had his reasons for leaving, too. In March 2005, after 24 years in the National Guard, Walz called it quits. He wanted to run for Congress. He departed in the middle of a six-year enlistment — and amid talk of mobilization — to pursue his political dream. 

Walz, a “neighborly” socialist tapped as Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate, at the time said service is service. 

“As Command Sergeant Major I have a responsibility not only to ready my battalion for Iraq, but also to serve if called on. I am dedicated to serving my country to the best of my ability, whether that is in Washington DC or in Iraq,” he said a March 2005 statement.

That was a few days after the National Guard Public Affairs Office announced “a possible partial mobilization of roughly 2,000 troops from the Minnesota National Guard.” The announcement noted that “all or a portion of Walz’s battalion could be mobilized to serve in Iraq within the next two years.” As the head cheese, Walz was looking at a deployment to a war-torn nation. 

“I don’t want to speculate on what shape my campaign will take if I am deployed, but I have no plans to drop out of the race,” the Democrat said at the time. “I am fortunate to have a strong group of enthusiastic supporters and a very dedicated and intelligent wife. Both will be a major part of my campaign, whether I am in Minnesota or Iraq.”

He stayed in Minnesota. Ultimately he went to Washington, beginning a political career marked by the kind of Marxist ideas that have made Minnesota and the United States weaker, more dangerous, and significantly more in debt. 

Walz chose Congress over his battalion. He retired. Soon thereafter his unit was officially mobilized and deployed to the war zone.  

Osmulski said the sudden departure of a commanding officer would be a huge letdown to a battalion preparing for deployment in a war. 

“That would have a definite impact on morale, for your command sergeant major to to that,” he said. “He’s training with you, getting ready to go with you, with the expectation that you are going to war, and this guy suddenly says, ‘I’m going to retire and run for Congress?’ You bet there’s going to be grumbling about that.”

Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, former President Donald Trump’s running mate in November’s presidential election, has taken aim at Walz’s political decision. 

“When Tim Walz was asked by his country to go to Iraq, you know what he did? He dropped out of the Army and allowed his unit to go without him — a fact that he’s been criticized for aggressively by a lot of the people he served with,” said Vance, a U.S. Marine Corps and Iraq War veteran.

The Harris-Walz campaign has been on the defensive. It issued a statement this week hoping to shore up Walz’s questionable military credentials. 

“In his 24 years of service, the Governor carried, fired and trained others to use weapons of war innumerable times. Governor Walz would never insult or undermine any American’s service to this country — in fact, he thanks Senator Vance for putting his life on the line for our country. It’s the American way.”

But Walz has repeatedly insulted and undermined the service of America’s servicemembers — by lying about his service to serve his political ambitions. 

‘Far Darker Than a Lot of People Think’

The consummate politician was deployed during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but to non-combat zones of Norway and Italy. It is true he technically served in support of the war efforts, but he was thousands of miles away from the firing lines. 

In 2018, Walz campaigned for governor with a gun-control message that inflated his service. “We can make sure those weapons of war, that I carried in war, are only carried in war,” he said of proposals to ban assault rifles. 

Except, there appears to be nothing in his reported military records to suggest the former National Guardsman actually fired a weapon in war. Training others “to use weapons of war innumerable times,” isn’t the same as firing them “in war.”  

“To most people, that would mean that he was actually in combat, carrying a weapon in a combat zone and getting combat pay and in a dangerous and hostile environment where he is getting shot at,” Ret. Command Sgt. Maj. Thomas Behrends, who served with Walz in the Guard, told Fox News host Laura Ingraham. He said that the governor’s misleading comments are “far darker than a lot of people think.” 

‘Stolen Valor’

Vance has accused Walz of stealing valor for political gain. 

“What was this weapon that you carried into war, given that you abandoned your unit right before they went to Iraq, and he has not spent a day in a combat zone? What bothers me about Tim Walz is the stolen valor garbage,” Vance said this week on the campaign trail.

“He’s used the rank that he never achieved in order to advance his political career,” Behrends told Ingraham. “I mean, he still says he’s a retired command sergeant major to this day, and he’s not. He uses the rank of others to make it look like he’s a better person than he is.”

As Politico reported Thursday, the Harris-Walz campaign quietly updated its online biography to reflect that Walz retired as a sergeant major, not a retired command sergeant major as the governor and his campaigns have claimed over the years. Walz’s gubernatorial website still makes it appear as if he retired as “Command Sergeant Major.”

“After 24 years in the Army National Guard, Command Sergeant Major Walz retired from the 1-125th Field Artillery Battalion in 2005,” the biography states. 

Mostly, though, corporate media are, not surprisingly, covering for Walz’s inflated military narrative just as they go about reinventing Vice President Kamala Harris, attempting to package a bumbling “border czar” and word salad shooter into the next Golda Meir. Without the Jewishness, of course. Because it seems clear the DNC and its presidential campaign want nothing to do with Jews. 

The leftist governor who let Minneapolis burn under Black Lives Matter riots and oppressively locked down his fellow citizens in the name of Covid is a scumbag. He’s not alone. A lot of politicians on both sides of the aisle are scumbags. 

What makes him a whole different class of scumbag is how he has used and abused his military record to further his political advantage — at the expense of brave men and women who actually served on the front lines. 

But it’s Walz’s decision to walk out on his unit at a critical time that has old soldiers like Osmulski scratching their heads. 

“It’s never convenient for anybody to go to war, even for people who want to go to war,” Osmulski said. “But to get someone who uses his rank and position to do something no one else in the unit could have done … that undermines the stability of the unit.” 

Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.