Democratic presidential candidate Martin O’Malley said Sunday that politicians should not use the term “boots on the ground” in relation to deploying U.S. forces abroad, arguing that it was demeaning to those troops.
Republicans used the term to look “macho,” he said.
O’Malley made the comment in response to a question during Sunday’s Democratic presidential primary debate directed to all of the candidates about whether they could envision any scenario in which they would authorize mass troop deployments to the Middle East to defeat the Islamic State. O’Malley and his rivals, Hillary Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., all said no.
O’Malley then offered some further thoughts on the subject of “boots on the ground,” a term commonly used among Obama administration officials as well.
“I appreciate the fact that in our debate, we don’t use the term that you hear Republicans throwing around, trying to look all bravado and macho sending other kids into combat. They keep using the term ‘boots on the ground.’ A woman in Burlington, Iowa, said to me, ‘Governor, when you are with your colleagues please don’t refer to my son, who has served two tours of duty in Iraq, as a pair of boots on the ground.’ We need to be mindful of learning the lesson of that,” O’Malley said.
