I respect Mr. Todd Cardin’s family’s contributions to the United States but still can’t fathom the point of his op-ed piece. I too am a veteran and retired as a major in the U.S. Army. I served 20 years to an ungrateful nation. I, like Congressman Zinke, served in special operations. I too will vote for the Donald. I am not wild about the choice.

Your arguments though heartfelt are sentimental. This is not the time for sentiment. You have a Bible from 1836 that went through several campaigns. I too have a family Bible dating from just after the Civil War. It was obtained by immigrants that had just gotten here. I have other prayer books that also went through military service. That does not matter.

What matters is the future of a nation that is torn between two identities. The first is the traditionally founded America. Trump, for all his faults, represents an attempt to at least try to maintain that identity as the predominant one. The other, represented by Hillary Clinton, is the direct antithesis of everything your forebears fought for.

Mrs. Clinton, though not convicted, is at least guilty of the worst kind of carelessness. She is a poor judge of character and has compromised our intelligence structure. How many informants want to work with the U.S. after the Iranian physicist was executed? How many would-be ambassadors in the State Department feel that it’s worth the risk to take an obscure posting in a potentially volatile country after Benghazi? How much money do the Clintons owe to foreign power peddlers? What have we excused from such people in order that the Clintons may thrive politically through those generous donations? I do not know the answers to these, and Hillary isn’t talking.

So Donald can’t run a university? That may be true. But I taught at the University of Montana in Missoula. I wasn’t impressed with that operation either. At least Trump tried to give it a go. Is he a bad businessman? I don’t think so. Yes, some of his businesses have been bankrupted and yes that has hurt people, but he was willing to give it a go and give those folks a chance. This is the stuff of a leader.

He is a poor public speaker? Yes, and so are the last two presidents. At least Trump believes in us and wants us secure. He is willing to try different solutions. Hillary is willing to sell out and compromise us. The third-party candidate had a golden opportunity to steal the summer and they blew that in internal squabbling and blatant failure of wanting to seize the moment. Only Trump shows a modicum of leadership. That is the job of the commander-in-chief. At least he is willing to own the attempt.

As a veteran, I saw that we veterans have to be careful of one grave error. That is this — we hold our service up higher than it may be and in so doing set ourselves up as experts in things we are not. Washington had the opportunity to hold the military as the highest authority in the land. If you read his speech to the troops after the first attempted mutiny, you will see that he sealed our fate in that regard. We are experts in service to the nation — that is all. We are not experts in saving it, though we did our part. Our time in service, though honorable, was solely to give this generation its chance. Hillary will not uphold that ideal.

When I see my son-in-law who has been serving these past nine years, I am continually amazed at where and how the youngsters see opportunity and what they are fighting for. Let us greybeards stop speaking for them and start speaking to them. Trump is flawed, yes. But Hillary is antithetical. Which candidate would your Civil War ancestors see as helpful? Or dangerous?

DeCree is a resident of Whitefish.