LETTER TO EDITOR: Kleiner Insults Veterans with Attacks on Day

To the Editor,

As a Pearl River resident and Air Force veteran (Operation Enduring Freedom), I’ve continued to read with disgust, both in your pages and on social media, candidate for town supervisor Thom Kleiner and his campaign repeatedly denigrate our military and veterans in their desire to attack decorated Army combat veteran Chris Day.

Mr. Day has, among many other things, pledged to bring a sense of “military discipline and private sector efficiency to government.”  Mr. Kleiner and his supporters have continued to attack that phrase, “military discipline,” as a negative and an insult. Well, the reality is that in doing so they insult me and my fellow veterans here in Orangetown and beyond.

Our veterans have led Fortune 500 companies, served as elected leaders of our great nation from our own town council up through to the presidency, coached our youth sports, raised families as dedicated fathers and mothers, served as clergy and lay volunteers at church. They are police officers, firefighters, teachers, accountants, ironworkers, and everything in between.

What do they all have in common? They applied their sense of “military discipline” to both accomplish great things and to selflessly help our community. The focus they learned in the military, the attention to detail, the willingness to sacrifice themselves for others – all part of that “discipline” Kleiner attacks – has made our town and country, as well as every organization they have served in, stronger by far.

When Thom Kleiner uses this phrase as a pejorative, he’s running plays out of an extreme leftist, anti-American playbook, one that doesn’t respect our military and our veterans.

So I say to Thom – you should thank God for that military discipline you seem to enjoy mocking so much. It’s one of the main reasons our country and town are as great as they are, and it and people like Chris Day are why you have the ability to sit there and put your attacks to paper in peace.

Sincerely,

William Deighan
Pearl River

  ed day, Thom Kleiner