Reuters is reporting that while he was still a U.S. Army officer, current GOP candidate for Pennsylvania Governor Doug Mastriano posed in a Confederate States of America uniform in a photo of him and other Army War College faculty in 2013.
In case you’ve forgotten, that particular army killed more than 100,000 U.S. Army soldiers during their treasonous attempt to protect their states’ citizens’ right to own human beings. (About 15,000 of those killed were from Pennsylvania.)
Reuters had to use the Freedom of Information Act to obtain the photo that includes 21 faculty members of the Department of Military Strategy, Plans, and Operations, of which all but five are wearing civilian street clothes and U.S. military uniforms (another is holding an airplane propeller and an aviator’s helmet). Mastriano is the only one wearing the rebel uniform.
For some good reason, none of them chose to wear the signature black pajamas of the Viet Cong.
Other than the obvious question of why Mastriano would think it would be cool to wear the uniform of an army that fought against the United States of America, one must also ask why no one else on that day seems to have thought it would be a bad idea. Why on Earth would the U.S. Army’s War College have tolerated anyone celebrating or commemorating traitors and secessionists that nearly ended the United States?
In recent years, such displays of allegiance to an enemy of the United States have been banned in the U.S. military. But at that time, it seems everyone grinned and had a good time.
And Reuters reported that War College removed the photo from public display AFTER Reuters’ FOIA request.