Semper fi

Here’s a story that totally messes with the narrative put forward by the Republican presidential candidate: an Iraqi refugee, a woman, who is serving in the very military that he dodged five times in his youth.

Amanda H. Issa first encountered Marines as a child in Mosul, where she admired all the qualities that the candidate does not possess: discipline, sacrifice, comradeship, skill… So after a period in a refugee camp in Turkey, she and her family came to this country in 2011, settling in Michigan. Since then she’s graduated from high school and junior college, and joined the Marines she so admired as a child.

Ironically, during her bootcamp training at Parris Island earlier this year, Issa suffered a foot injury on a conditioning hike. It was so bad that USMC doctors told her she could be separated from the service. Issa refused to consider that and was graduated as PFC last month. Unlike the candidate, who used bone spurs to get his multiple deferments from the draft.

And she’s the kind of person that buffoon and his followers would like to exclude from our country.