Sen. Mark Kelly is wasting dismay on Tommy Tuberville

Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly is incensed at how Alabama Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville is jeopardizing America’s national security by putting a hold on military promotions.

Meanwhile, Tuberville complains about … poetry?

Tuberville is an anti-abortion fanatic who wants the Pentagon to change its policy that reimburses military personnel for travel to states where they are not stationed in order to receive reproductive health care services, including abortion.

In an op-ed for Fox, Kelly wrote in part, ”Tuberville is treating our service members and their families as political pawns … . This leaves the most critical positions vacant or filled by acting personnel doing multiple jobs at once without the necessary experience and authority.

“It has also impacted thousands of officers beneath them who are prevented from advancing. That hamstrings our military — and undermines our readiness to the benefit of our adversaries.”

Meanwhile, Tuberville rails against poetry

While this has been going on, Tuberville has been whining about members of armed forces reading poetry.

No … seriously.

He said recently, “Right now we are so woke in the military, we are losing recruits right and left. Secretary [Carlos] Del Toro of the Navy, he needs to get to building ships; he needs to get to recruiting; and he needs to get wokeness out of our Navy. We’ve got people doing poems on aircraft carriers over the loudspeaker. It is absolutely insane the direction that we’re headed in our military.”

In response, Tuberville has gotten plenty of less-than-poetic responses.

Like the comedian Jon Stewart, who posted on X (formally Twitter), “Oh my God [Tommy Tuberville]. Poems?!!! In the military??!!! S--t like ‘I don’t know but I been told, Eskimo Pee is mighty cold?’ The real question is how military readiness is affected by the Senate confirmation process being held hostage by one of the dumbest MFers to ever grace the marbled halls of Congress.”

Actually, poems play a key role in war

The poet Tess Taylor chimed in saying that Tuberville “had revealed his ignorance about the history of the US military, about the inner lives of soldiers and about what poems really do. For context: Reading and writing poetry while at war has been long considered an urgent, humanizing and patriotic act.”

She’s right. And there are receipts.

Montini: There is no 'middle ground' with Tuberville

I’d suggest, for example, reading Seigfried Sassoon’s “Died of Wounds” from World War I. Or Randall Jerrell’s “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner” from World War II. Or “The Soldiers” by William Childress from the Korea conflict.

Or Kevin Bowen’s “Incoming” from Vietnam. Or Seth Brady Tucker’s “The Road to Baghdad” and Chantelle Bateman’s “PTSD” from Iraq and Afghanistan.

A few relevant lines for the senator

It goes on and on.

I’d guess that reading an entire poem would be too much to expect from someone like Tuberville, however.

In which case, how about an excerpt?

All the good senator needs to know can be found in a few lines from a work by William Carlos Williams. They are:

It is difficult/

to get the news from poems/

yet men die miserably every day/

for lack/

of what is found there.

Reach Montini at ed.montini@arizonarepublic.com.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Sen. Tommy Tuberville reveals his ignorance about the military