To Those Who Gave Everything - And To Those Still Giving

Today is Memorial Day. A day set aside to honor the men and women who gave their lives in service to this country. We fly flags, hold parades, and gather with family - and all of that is right and good. But I want to go further than ceremony today. I want to speak plainly, with the respect and the honesty that the people who wore this nation's uniform deserve.

To every fallen service member: your sacrifice was real. Your life mattered. The families you left behind still feel your absence every single day. We have not forgotten you, and we will not.

I cannot stand here and honor our fallen while staying silent about what is happening right now to the living men and women still in uniform.

This administration renamed the Department of Defense the Department of War. That is not a symbolic gesture - it is a declaration of intent. And the actions that followed confirmed it. We have seen military escalation with Iran. We have seen deployments and interventions in places that were never put to a real debate before the American people. And through all of it, the people being sent into harm's way - your sons, daughters, parents, and spouses - are treated not as human beings, but as instruments of someone else's ambition.

When elected officials stop seeing the people they send to war as fully human, it shows. Not just in the wars they start, but in the conditions they tolerate at home. In the benefits they cut. In the oversight they ignore. In the assaults they fail to prosecute. In the veterans they leave to wait months or years for the care they were promised.

They do not care if you live or die as long as they can hold on to their power. That is the truth, and I refuse to dress it up.

Honoring our military means being honest about what we are asking them to endure. These are not abstractions - these are the documented realities of life in uniform today.

Over 730,000 active duty personnel and veterans are living with PTSD. Depression rates are high and rising, driven by combat exposure, relentless deployment cycles, and prolonged separation from family. Suicide has claimed more service members than combat in recent years. Chronic pain, musculoskeletal injuries, and long-term disabilities are common - and too often, the system that is supposed to treat them is slow, underfunded, and indifferent.

The stigma around seeking mental health care remains a barrier that costs lives. We have to dismantle it - not with a press release, but with real structural change.

This is one of the most shameful failures in our military today. In a single year, there are over 20,000 instances of unwanted sexual contact reported within the ranks. Women - who make up under 20% of the force - account for 63% of those assaults. And the response from the institution is too often silence, retaliation, or dismissal.

Women in uniform face not just the threat of assault, but pervasive gender discrimination, a culture that was not built with them in mind, and leadership that too frequently looks the other way. This is not a minor policy problem. It is a moral failure, and it demands a complete overhaul - not a working group, not a memo, but real accountability and real change.

Military families carry burdens that most Americans never see. Frequent mandatory relocations disrupt schooling, careers, and community roots. Spouses face limited employment options because the military moves them before they can build stability. Long deployments strain marriages to the breaking point. And all of this happens on salaries that - for many lower enlisted ranks - qualify families for federal assistance programs.

We are asking people to sacrifice everything, and then leaving their families to struggle financially while they are overseas doing it. That is not acceptable.

Leaving the military is its own kind of trauma. Veterans face significant barriers finding civilian employment that reflects their skills and experience. Access to healthcare during the transition window is often inadequate. The identity shift from service member to civilian can be profoundly disorienting, and the support systems are not where they need to be.

We build warriors. We owe it to them to help them come home.

If you elect different, it will be different. That is not a slogan - it is a commitment I am making in public, on the record, for you to hold me to.

On mental health: Fully fund mental health services for every active duty service member and veteran. Eliminate the stigma at the institutional level by changing leadership culture from the top down. No service member should have to fight a bureaucracy to get the care they earned.

On military sexual trauma: Prosecutions, not policies. Independent oversight. Mandatory accountability for commanders who fail to act. And genuine, funded support for survivors - not just a hotline.

On pay and financial stability: No family that has a member serving in uniform should qualify for public assistance because their military pay is not enough. Period. We will fix the pay scale, and we will fix the housing and relocation support that military families depend on.

On military spouses: Employment portability, licensing reciprocity across state lines, and real support systems so that the people holding families together during deployments are not being left behind economically.

On veteran transition: A transition process that treats leaving the military as a significant life event that requires real preparation, real support, and guaranteed access to healthcare until civilian coverage is secured.

On war itself: No American will be sent to fight in a war that has not been honestly debated before the American people and their representatives. Not for political theater. Not for corporate interests. Not to demonstrate power. War is the last option - not the first impulse.

This is a pledge I am making clearly, on the record: if one of our service members dies while deployed, we are going to find out why.

Every use of military force in which an American life was lost will be subject to a full, independent investigation under my administration. Not a Pentagon review. Not a classified internal report that never sees the light of day. A genuine investigation into whether that deployment was necessary - whether it served the national interest - or whether it served someone else's private interest.

War profiteering is real. Private contractors, defense corporations, and their political allies have spent decades shaping foreign policy to protect their bottom line. When the decision to deploy is influenced by profit rather than necessity, the men and women who die in that deployment were not sacrificed for their country - they were sacrificed for someone's portfolio. That is not something any government should be allowed to bury.

Every fallen service member deserves the truth. Every family that has buried someone in uniform deserves to know whether that sacrifice was real. And every official, contractor, or executive who pushed for a conflict they knew was unnecessary - knowing Americans would die - deserves to face what they did.

When we elect leaders who cannot see all human life as equal in worth - their own people's and everyone else's - we see it in everything they do. We see it across the world.

They destabilize other nations. They fund proxy wars. They call drone strikes on hospitals collateral damage. They let our men and women die for greed dressed up as patriotism. And the people on the receiving end - the civilians in those countries, the families torn apart by bombs dropped in their name - their cries fill the earth. History records those cries. And history records the names of the people who gave the orders.

I have already drafted and published Executive Order 2029-01 - which will be signed on my first day in office. It is titled Ensuring Extradition for UN-Backed War Crimes: Superseding Pardon Power, Limiting Judicial Delay, and Mandating Federal Funding.

You can read it in full at https://www.cordova2028.com/executive-orders/executive-order-2029-01.

Under EO 2029-01, any covered person - elected official, military commander, intelligence officer, private contractor, or banker who knowingly financed atrocities - who is wanted by a foreign state for war crimes determined by the United Nations, will be extradited. No domestic pardon will bar it. No former title will shield them. No corner office, presidential library, or gated community will hide them.

No flag makes a crime a virtue. No oath excuses a massacre. No title places a human being above the law of nations.

The people who have sent our service members to die for private interests while funding the slaughter of civilians abroad are not patriots. They are war criminals. Under this administration, they will face the world they created - because the world will come for them, and we will not stand in the way.

No pardon will save them.

There are people in positions of power right now who rename departments and send troops to conflicts they cannot explain clearly to a grieving mother. They wrap themselves in the flag while cutting the benefits of the people who bled under it. They use the military as a prop while ignoring the human beings inside the uniform.

That is not leadership. That is the use of other people's lives as currency.

Real leadership starts with seeing every service member - every person, in every country - as fully human. As someone with a family, a future, a story. As someone whose life has infinite worth. When you govern from that foundation, your decisions look very different. You do not start wars casually. You do not ignore sexual assault. You do not let veterans sleep on streets or wait years for mental health care. And you do not bomb the world's poor to protect the world's powerful.

As you honor those who gave everything - please also think about the ones still serving. Think about what we are asking them to carry. Think about what they deserve from the country they are protecting.

And then ask yourself: do the people currently in power see them the way you do?

If the answer is no - then it is time to elect someone who does.

REPORT WAR CRIMES: warcrimes.extradition@vincentcordova.com