A retired Navy SEAL while serving his third combat tour in the June of 2012, faced a modified explosive device in Helmand province of Afghanistan. The explosive device caused him to lose his right eye, while his left eye sustained severe damage.
Dan Crenshaw was told by the doctors that he would not be able to see again, but through multiple surgeries and procedures later he regained his sight of the left eye with the help of specialized contact lenses. Just after four months, the Navy Seal was fitted with a glass eye and a signature eye-patch. He was back on the shooting range in Mississippi as he trained to rejoin his teammates.
Crenshaw, who has served his combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan and has been responsible for leadership posts in Bahrain and South Korea before, had to medically retire in 2016 and is now planning on his battle for a seat in the U.S. House.
“What makes me get up in the morning is knowing I’m doing something for the country and I was not ready to quit that,” Crenshaw said in a statement. “I think this is why I’m driven to Congress now, because it’s another path I can take to make a positive impact on people’s lives and serve in a way that is meaningful and push for values that I believe in.”
He is among one of the nine candidates who would be competing from Texas’s Republican Primary on 9th March this year to take Representative Ted Poe’s seat. Furthermore, he is one of the three veterans from Military who are running for the seat. The other two being the retired Army 2nd Lt. Jonny Havens – served twice in Iraq, and Jon Spiers, who had worked as a surgeon in the Army Reserves.
He had said that his most recent deployments in Middle East regions and South Korea is what gives him an edge over other candidates, it also provides him deep insights into the pressing and serious national security challenges like the proliferation of weapons by both, Iran and North Korea, and severe threats faced because of Islamic terrorism.
He was appreciative of President Donald Trump’s strong-arm approach to face North Korea, which he had described as the topmost threat faced by the United States.
“We have to jolt the system a little bit,” Crenshaw said. “As crazy as the rhetoric sounds to a lot of people, [Trump] has to provide that credible threat in order to bring the Chinese onboard to pressure North Korea and really make some changes with the regime’s behavior.”
Crenshaw, who had previously also received a master’s degree in public administration from the Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, said in addition to the foreign threats, Americans also need protection from severely high taxes, the overregulation, and government infringements on the freedoms and rights such as the right to bear arms.
“The swamp needs credibility,” he said. “Our vision should be one of optimism, one of limited government, where we first ask what we can do for our community and our country and not the other way around. That’s the true essence of conservatism.”