Veterans group praises Trump peace agreement, chides "Chicken Hawk Cheney"
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Sgt. Dan McKnight, Afghanistan war veteran and founder of BringOurTroopsHome.US, Saturday praised President Donald Trump's announcement of a peace agreement with Taliban forces that could lead to total withdrawal of U.S. forces in Afghanistan some time next year. The announcement came a day after McKnight blasted Congresswoman Liz Cheney (R-WY), for attempting to publicly undercut Trump's efforts.
“After nearly two decades, we're grateful that our Commander-in-Chief stood with the American people and with America's fighting men and women and their families," McKnight said, "and ignored the wolf-crying demands of chicken hawks such as Liz Cheney, whose family profiteered from hundreds of millions of dollars in military contracts, literally making money off wars they sent other people to fight."
"The demands Ms. Cheney tried to dictate to the president earlier this week were designed to do one thing," McKnight said, "prevent him from keeping his campaign promise to end the longest war in American history and bring our troops home. Thank you for listening to the American people, Mr. President, and ignoring Chicken Hawk Cheney.”
Cheney Wednesday released a letter — signed by just 21 other House Republicans — publicly challenging the president's efforts and demanding that any agreement "must not contain a commitment for a full U.S. withdrawal" of troops from Afghanistan.
"War-mongering chicken hawks like Ms. Cheney -- who's never put on a uniform herself, and whose family profiteered from hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. military contracts -- have schemed to keep the United States in perpetual war for nearly a generation, always expecting other people's families to pay the price in blood and trillions of taxpayer dollars," said McKnight, who served eighteen months in the Pech River Valley with the Idaho Army National Guard.
"Thankfully, we finally have a Commander-in-Chief in President Trump,” McKnight said, “with the courage to stand up to the Chicken Hawk Cheneys and the military industrial complex that General Eisenhower warned us about, who's trying to end these ridiculous, endless, bankrupting wars and finally bring our troops home."
McKnight said while Cheney's attempt to "once again publicly undercut the president's efforts is a slap in the face to those who’ve actually served, bled, and died," he's encouraged that the House Republican Conference Chair could persuade less than two dozen of the 196 other Republicans in the House to join her in signing the letter.
"Hopefully, given the broken record of her incessant demands that we continue to spill American blood and treasure at every turn, in one country after another, that's a sign of her increasingly diminished credibility and influence on U.S. foreign and military policy," McKnight said.
McKnight noted a Politico poll last year which found that – in direct contradiction to Cheney’s demands that U.S. forces not be withdrawn -- 81 percent of Trump voters support the president’s efforts to bring our troops home from Afghanistan, and a YouGov poll last month which found that 70 percent of all Americans also support withdrawing troops from the war-torn country.
