Remember that made-up, phantom quote (disavowed by more than a dozen eyewitnesses) that the Democrats attributed to Donald Trump about U.S. war dead being “suckers and losers”? I wondered why Joe Biden and his surrogates kept doubling down on that lie, long after it had been discredited. Was it mere cynicism, like Joe Biden’s incessant parroting of the “very fine people” myth, and the Russia collusion hoax?

No, it was something deeper and darker, an instance of the psychological projection that haunts the whole Biden/Harris gang. It’s projection when Attorney General Merrick Garland gets up in front of the cameras to warn that Trump would “weaponize” the criminal justice system, even as Trump himself awaits sentencing for a list of invented felonies that hopped through a kangaroo court and Steve Bannon stews in a cell for defying a congressional subpoena — which Democrats do routinely (for instance, Fani Willis who hunted Trump in Georgia).

Projecting Their Sins onto the Innocent

It’s projection when Kamala Harris, who supports abortion up through birth, accuses conservatives of not respecting human life when they’re skeptical of millions of “refugees” getting scooped up in places like Haiti and dumped in Trump-voting counties.

And it is projection on a scale worthy of Joseph Goebbels unspooling The Triumph of the Will for Eva Braun over sausages and schnapps when this administration throws stones on the subject of respect for U.S. military servicemen and women.

The pieces all fell into place for me when I read what Democrat officials say about U.S. veterans in secret, in emails they send each other not intended for the press, but … whoopsies! They accidentally looped in a Fox News reporter. As Fox went on to report:

On the anniversary of 9/11, White House National Security Council communications adviser John Kirby dismissed the concerns of military veterans critical of the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, writing in response to a Fox News Digital press inquiry that there’s “no use” weighing in on the veterans’ views.

“Obviously no use in responding. A ‘handful’ of vets indeed and all of one stripe,” Kirby said in a “reply all” email chain Wednesday afternoon that appeared to be intended for White House staffers, but which also included Fox News Digital.

This issue isn’t just civics to me. It’s personal. My grandfather, my father, I, and my son have served in the U.S. Army infantry. I’ve spent the past three years working closely with hundreds of veterans of the Afghan war, in the wake of Biden’s shameful cut-and-run surrender there — which left behind $90 billion in weapons for the Taliban.

I’m Still Getting Desperate 4 a.m. Calls from the Middle East

The callous bumbling of Biden and Harris’ Pentagon also got 11 Marines, one navy corpsman, and one soldier killed at Abbey Gate, and abandoned to torture and murder 170,000 Afghans who’d fought alongside Americans or served us as interpreters. Our veterans remember their comrades in arms, and have been pouring out their time, treasure, and tears attempting to save them. My Vulnerable People Project has been working with hundreds of such veterans, getting U.S. allies into safehouses and moving them through an underground railway. I still get calls at 4 a.m. from desperate families hiding in bolt-holes from vengeful jihadis. I told CatholicVote when this story broke:

As a young infantryman, I memorized the Ranger Creed, and two stanzas have particularly resonated with me: ‘I will never leave a fallen comrade to fall into the hands of the enemy, and under no circumstances will I ever embarrass my country,’ and ‘Readily will I display the intestinal fortitude required to complete the mission, though I be the lone survivor.’

Unfortunately, during the botched U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Biden administration embarrassed our country by abandoning our allies to their enemies.

If John Kirby wants to claim that veterans are “of one stripe,” that’s fine — because we’re of the stripe that will not embarrass our country. We will not abandon our allies, and we will complete the mission of resettling them with or without the Biden administration’s support. If only our politicians had a creed.

Nobody Even Interviewed the Abbey Gate Survivors

John Kirby speaks for the whole administration when he waves off with disdain brave U.S. Marines like Sgt. Tyler Vargas-Andrews, who lost an arm and a leg at Abbey Gate on Aug. 26, 2021. Kirby was probably hiding in a panic room when Vargas-Andrews testified before Congress:

I opened my eyes to Marines dead or unconscious lying around me. … My body was overwhelmed from the trauma of the blast. My abdomen had been ripped open, every inch of my exposed body except for my face took ball bearings and shrapnel.

…

The withdrawal was a catastrophe in my opinion, and there was an inexcusable lack of accountability and negligence. The 11 Marines, one sailor and one soldier that were murdered that day have not been answered for.

As I wrote at the time, “Nobody in the FBI or NCIS even interviewed [Sgt. Vargas-Andrews] after the terror strike — maybe because their superiors didn’t want to hear about the order he’d received not to shoot the terrorist before he set off the bomb.”

Men like Sgt. Vargas-Andrews don’t just forget the dead, or shrug off those left behind. Dozens of vets like him have confided in me that they suffer depression — even suicidal thoughts. They feel the guilt that suits like Kirby, and Biden, and Harris ought to be experiencing about the U.S. allies abandoned. That’s the dark side of projection nobody talks about — when the guilty evade responsibility, the innocent often get forced to bear it. I guess that’s one way we can imitate Christ, who also bore the guilty of other people’s sins.

The Democrats trashing our military won’t even bother responding to veterans of a certain “stripe.” Well now we know from their own words what “stripe” the civilians in power have: a yellow one, running all the way down their backs.

Jason Jones is a contributor to The Stream. He is a film producer, activist, and human rights worker. He is also the author of three books, the latest of which is The Great Campaign Against the Great Reset.