WASHINGTON – President Biden spent six grueling months at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center more than 30 years ago and had two brain aneurysms. In 2015, he was hospitalized again because his son, a major in the National Guard, lost his battle with brain cancer.
On Friday, Mr. Biden returned to the sprawling military medical facility where troops were treated and rehabilitated with some of the most serious battlefield injuries – this time for visits to wounded warriors as the country’s commander – in – chief. Mr. Biden’s visit to the hospital – and his private conversations with patients, their doctors and their families – is a ritual for presidents. And less than two weeks after his presidency, the short trip from the White House gave the new Oval Office resident a reminder of the cost of the war and the consequences of the decisions he could make.
“I spent a lot of time with Walter Reed,” he said. Biden said as he left the White House for the visit. “They are great Americans. They are wonderful people. ”
The president’s public grief over the death of his son made the visit to the hospital particularly poignant. Beau Biden was a major in the Delaware National Guard and was deployed to Iraq for a year as Attorney General during his tenure as Attorney General.
The younger Biden died at the end of May in 2015 after fighting cancer for almost two years. His father cited the emotional toll of his son’s death as one of the main reasons why he did not run for president in 2016. He was referring to the personal tragedy when he met the leaders of the hospital.
“You have done a lot for my family,” he said. Biden said during part of the presidential visit captured by cameras. “My son, Beau, came back after a year in Iraq with glioblastoma, you cared for him in his last days with great grace and dignity.”
Mr. Biden also mentions the time when he himself, then a Delaware senator, was a patient in the hospital in the 1980s and recovered from two brain aneurysms that threatened to shorten his political career.
The president noted that he visited the hospital regularly during his eight years as vice president, a time he noted when wars around the world sent many more injured men and women there.
“As vice president, I would come here, my whole family, we would spend every Christmas day, all day here,” he said. Taking note of the reduction in fighting around the world, he added: ‘The good news is that there are not many people today. There were many then. ”
As a presidential candidate and previously as a vice president, Mr. Biden expressed deep concerns about the use of military force around the world. On the campaign, he promised to “end the eternal wars”, a phrase he used to describe the decades-long conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The New Washington
Biden nominated Lloyd J. Austin III as his nominee for secretary of defense and said the retired general shares his view on the need to avoid war.
‘We need his first knowledge of the immeasurable cost of war and the burden it places on our servants and their families to end the eternal wars and ensure that the use of force is the last tool in our toolbox, the last tool used to protect our national security, not the first, ”said Mr. Biden said.
The president said he feels connected to the men and women who are in the military, in part because of the service of his own son. And in his new role, he will definitely be confronted with decisions that will put troops in jeopardy.
Mr. Biden visited with five amputees who had retired. He also examined a hospital-built basketball gym that had been converted into a coronavirus vaccination site.
The predecessor of mr. Biden paid several visits to wounded troops at Walter Reed. But the most touching image of former President Donald J. Trump in the hospital was his visit for treatment after being diagnosed with Covid-19 in the waning months of his term.
In addition to releasing a short video from inside the hospital while he was ill, Mr. Trump also demanded a short ride in his freeway past supporters gathering outside the hospital on his behalf, a trip that has been heavily criticized by medical experts who said Mr. Trump unnecessarily ventured the disease to spread to his security detail.
The visit of mr. Biden Friday was less dramatic. He lands in the Marine One helicopter after a short flight from the South Lawn of the White House and returns less than two hours later.