'Complacent' Trump slammed by a Marine veteran for 'squandering' the honor of slain troops

Timothy Kudo, a veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps, criticized President Donald Trump in a Friday column at The Atlantic, describing him as a “complacent commander in chief.”

Kudo slammed Trump for reportedly not reading or ignoring intelligence that had indicated Russia offered Taliban militants bounties to kill American soldiers in Afghanistan.

“I served under Barack Obama and George W. Bush, and I trusted that both would uphold their end of the bargain with the military: We go into harm’s way, and they wage the war honorably and responsibly. This president is different,” he wrote.

Trump has sent a message to U.S. troops that nobody "has their back," Kudo said, adding that improvised explosive devices would often blow apart U.S. service members in Afghanistan.

“Despite the danger from Taliban fighters and other IEDs, a squad would search the scene to try to collect additional body parts. We didn’t always succeed. One man’s ring finger with his wedding band was never found and returned to his widow. But honoring their sacrifice demanded follow-through and every possible effort to the end,” Kudo wrote.

“When the president treats the conclusion of this war as unimportant, his behavior squanders whatever honor the men and women currently deployed may yet salvage from this terrible ordeal. They’re risking their life for the same cause as all of us who served: peace. More than 2,300 Americans have been killed in action; in these final moments of the war, we cannot let their sacrifices be in vain.”

Read the full column at The Atlantic.