ON THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL — After the issue of what does or does not count as a deployment emerged as an issue in the 2024 election, polls have shown that vice presidential candidate Tim Walz, a retired National Guard sergeant major, is rapidly gaining support among the crucial demographic of “guys who consider Kuwait a deployment.”

“I like Walz because he reminds me of myself,” said Carl Sutton, a former Army first lieutenant who served from 2006 to 2012 and once went TDY for two weeks to Hawaii. “Walz has seen the horrors of routine training events in partner countries. He’s the only one with the cold, hard experience to keep us out of foreign entanglements like Exercise Cobra Gold in Thailand, or a NATO conference in Belgium.” 

Walz, who served 24 years in the National Guard, has been criticized by political opponents for never having deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan. But Walz says that service in war is not the only mark of a true soldier. He says it will be his duty as vice president to bestow equal honors upon the heroes who have served in “such faraway lands as Kuwait, Germany, and [Fort Irwin National Training Center in San Bernardino County, California].”