Rep. Walter Jones, R-N.C., wrote more than 11,000 letters to the families of fallen American soldiers for a decade and a half. He believed it was his moral obligation to do this as penance for his vote to authorize the Iraq War in 2002. He began each letter as follows: “My heart aches as I write this letter for I realize you are suffering a great loss …”
Jones’ letters began in 2003 after attending the funeral of Marine Sgt. Michael Bitz near Camp Lejeune, which was part of his district. Sitting next to Bitz’s widow at the service, he grew sad watching their young son play with a toy. “I felt the guilt, but also the pain of voting to send her husband as well as thousands of other military to a war that was unnecessary,” Jones said. “I want them to know that my heart aches as their heart aches.”
From that time forward, Jones became one of the most outspoken, and very few, anti-war Republicans in Congress. This passion included targeting politicians he believed deserved it.
“Lyndon Johnson’s probably rotting in hell right now because of the Vietnam War,” Jones said in 2013, 10 years after his change of heart.
Jones added, without hesitation, “He probably needs to move over for Dick Cheney.”
Both kind and fierce, Walter Jones passed away Sunday on his 76th birthday. As scathing as his national headline-making statement about former Vice President Dick Cheney was, it was not ultimately rooted in hate. Yes, Jones deeply loathed the George W. Bush administration and the entire bipartisan political class for their policy of endless war, but his sentiment was born of an even deeper love for his country and its men and women in uniform, particularly those in North Carolina’s military-heavy 3rd District that he represented for almost a quarter-century.
Jones spent the last 16 years of his career trying to make up for his Iraq vote. The GOP establishment, most particularly his neoconservative arch-enemies, spent most of that time trying to diminish Jones or boot him from office for the unpardonable Republican sin of opposing war.
In 2007, Jones was in line to become part of Armed Services Subcommittee on Readiness. According to Roll Call, he was denied that position when former Rep. Duncan L. Hunter, R-Calif., told the North Carolina congressman “he couldn’t put him in that position because he knew Jones would vote with the Democrats to get out of Iraq.”
“I said, ‘Duncan, you’re exactly right; I will,’ Jones recounted. ‘So that pretty much told me that by doing what you think is right, no matter what the issue might be, there’s a price to pay.’”
After that, Jones started getting primaried.
In 2008, Jones received his first Republican primary challenge, when area county commissioner Joe McLaughlin called him a “poster boy for the liberal left.” McLaughlin blasted Jones for voting for Iraq troop withdrawal in tandem with progressive former Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio. The challenger also compared the conservative congressman to Code Pink’s Cindy Sheehan. Jones, in return, blamed the “neocons” for the U.S. invasion of Iraq, said those who still get their pro-war foreign policy views from Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity were “Kool-Aid drinkers,” and doubled down on his Bush-Cheney criticism.
Jones defeated McLaughlin by nearly 20 points.
In 2012, Jones faced another Republican primary challenger in former police chief Frank Palombo, who attacked Jones’ supposed “liberal voting record” which included “support for Ron Paul’s foreign policy,” and “cut-and-run policy regarding the war on Islamic Extremism.”
Jones defeated Palombo by 38 points.
In 2014, Jones battled his most formidable primary challenger to date in former George W. Bush aide Taylor Griffin, who has heavily funded by outside money, including prominent neoconservatives. The Washington establishment threw everything they had at Jones. In fact, 2014 was an all-out war on anti-war Republicans. Neoconservative Bill Kristol spent a lot of time trying to remove Jones.
Jones survived his neocon saboteur that year by 6 points.
Two years later in 2016, when Donald Trump was turning the Republican Party and its foreign policy upside down, Jones demolished second-time primary opponent Griffin and another challenger, combined, by 30 points. In 2018, Jones was re-elected, unopposed, to what he said would be his final term in office.
For almost a decade, the warmongers went after Walter Jones as hard as they could for as long as they could.
They lost every single time.
Thankfully, Jones wasn’t completely alone in these battles. When he made his anti-Cheney comments in 2013, they were in front of, and enthusiastically received by, student activist group Young Americans for Liberty, the formidable libertarian organization formerly known as Students for Ron Paul. Paul joined libertarian-friendly Republicans Reps. Jimmy Duncan, R-Tenn., Justin Amash, R-Mich., and Thomas Massie, R-Ky., as well as Mark Sanford, R-S.C., as constant allies for Jones during each man’s respective time in the House, particularly in advocating for a more restrained foreign policy.
This liberty faction within the GOP became not only consistent critics of former President Barack Obama’s regime change policies, but Republicans’ post-Bush foreign policy overreach, including President Trump. This would lead Jones to support Ron Paul for president twice, in 2008 and 2012. When he endorsed Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., for president in 2016, Jones said, “The Republican Party is becoming the war party … and Paul is the candidate who can reverse that course.”
Though Jones’ anti-war positions came straight from the heart regardless of politics, having these political allies never hurt. The unwaveringly principled Jones will always be a hero to the enduring liberty movement he helped grow and on which he had such an indelible impact.
Jones’ integrity and compassion was inspiring. “Because I did not do my job then, I helped kill 4,000 Americans, and I will go to my grave regretting that,” he lamented in a 2015 radio interview.
When Jones turned against the Iraq War, most political observers didn’t think an anti-war Republican could hold on to his military district, though he came to oppose war precisely because he represented a military district. In turn, each election, each Republican primary, Jones was supported by his district.
His political enemies thought supporting the troops meant blindly supporting war for any reason. Walter Jones learned, unlike most of his peers, that it meant making sure America only goes to war for the right reasons.
Jack Hunter (@jackhunter74) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is the former political editor of Rare.us and co-authored the 2011 book The Tea Party Goes to Washington with Sen. Rand Paul.
